New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-10-17

Miss Priscilla died, verify, believe, OF nome
sickness. So you understand, my dear, when
see Miss Rose come floating down atnight,
when the lamps are lit here, in her Indian
gauze and diamonds, the rose and the lily
alive, all smiles and bushes, and enough to
take your breath away with her beauty, as
must admit, tell Lawrence that / can't
help regarding her as a lovely flower that
has grown up on heap of compost. And
somehow can't bear to think of my grand
children being Mr.. Marks grandchildren
and there it is!'' And Mrs. Burbridge shook
out her dimities and guipures with the air of
one whose money (what she had of it, had
been so long coming down through the hands
of so many ancestors that it had gotten very
clean and bright in the handling. "But,
then, after all, }" said she, "you see, as l
said, it may be only foolish prejudice and
somehow 1 can't bear to think, either Of
Lawrence letting such fortune slip through
his fingers. An only child she is heavy
settlement she would have; and Lawrence
could have the army, and such a palace as he
could make of the old Burbridge place. 1
declare, don't know what to dol"
Perhaps Miss Rodney, who had already
seen good deal of the world, was not much
inundated by her conversation with Mrs.
Burbridge, or else she had conceived some
interest in Rose Marks own identity, and
itself; for she was stand a,< .: -. ,er--: as
Rose dashed up the steps aI,e u:,u o: her
ride. "What lovely HORSE" said Miss
Rodney, as Lawrence handed Miss Rose
down and presented her to his cousin.
60! a beauty. Isn't he ?' cried the sweet
voice of Rose Marks. "My birthday pres
ent from papa. Oh! you don't know what a
good, kind, dear old father, Miss Rodney.
Mr.: Bunbridge's cousin, pap" And as the
little figure Strengthened itself, any one might
see that the child was prouder of her father
than If he had been a prince.
Mr.. Marks bowed with n somewhat stiff
and cold air, that would have seemed like
haughtiness, if haughtiness from him the rich
pleoeian to Miss Rodney, of the blue blood,
| would not have been preposterous. Then
| he asked Rose if her ride had been pleasant,
and walked on beside young Mr.. Dunlap,
| with his head down and the evening paper
of the day before, which had only come in a
couple Of hours since, clasped in his hands
| behind him. "He is plotting some new mis-
chief" thought Miss Rodney. And Rose
kissed her fingers to him when he glanced
back, and then ran up stairs and smile
shOne on his face like burst of sunlight in
| an autumn wood, if so pOetical figure suited
we'll any expression Of a face scanned over
with so many fine wrinkles that it resembled
| a multiplication table.
Lawrence was waiting for her when she
came down to dinner, an hour later; and so
was young Mr.. Farren; and so was Roger
Dunlap, tOo-the last a clerk of Mr.. Marks.
But Lawrence's cavalry air had a way of dis
tancing competitors, ard it was his arm she
took. She was fairly respondent in her fresh
young beauty, clad in white garment, whose
skirts and ruffles surrounded her with sug-
gestion of white rose petals, and wearing
mol n rnr Ia Of
On the coral sticks of her point lace fan gilt
tered sprays of diamonds, and diamond but
ter1y twinkled as it danced on its spiral
amidst stem of coral berries, in her yellow
hair. And SO catching all eyes and winning
all hearts with her lOveliness, she went to
the sumptuous dinner, with its trout and
game and dainties, its mountain berries, deli
ciOus CONNECTIONS and early oranges-the Mo-
selle-Muscatel wine, and the MOcha-smil-
ing and happy and pleased with ali the world.
AS Mr.. Dunlap took his seat at the table
with her father, and looked at her brilliance
and gayety, he could not help remembering
the scenes he had witnessed only the day
before at a tenement house of her fathers,
where an errand had sent him, unaccustomed
to any but the counting-room work, which
hardly revealed details in their squalor.
He recalled the street, reeking with stencil
es under the July sun, beneath which glass
would have stood at more than a hundred,
and where not breath of wind was blowing;
the great rude building, whose scorching
bricks radiated the heat like a furnace, till
the very air seemed baked; the loathsome
entries, foul and fetid and thronged, and on
the first of which, before the heat had come,
water had plainly stood in pools; he saw the
great rats that disputed places with the dirty,
half-naked children on the wicked stairway;
the garbage lying everywhere in heaps; the
smell Of fever through the air. Women had
come out there with uncombed heads and
filthy tongues, and had accosted him; men
had been lying drunk and sunstruck in the
rooms he passed; he heard swearing and
cursing and children crying on every side.
And half-sufOcated and wholly heart-sick,
he was ready to swear and cry himself, with
the awful thoughts and sights and sounds
and smells. He passed a room there, where
six miserable girls herded together. They
might have been glad and sweet, if not as
lovely, as this girl, with food and rest and
ignorance Of care and sin. But they braided
hats in a mandatory for twenty cents day;
and they paid together a hundred dollars a
year for their one room, and lived on crack
ers, with not enough of those. They had no
place for baths, and no soap, no towels, no
time they had no dress but one old gown
and a shawl; their hair had all been cut of
and sold long ago; they never read, they
had no lights, no books, no pennies to buy
papers; their single luxury was a broken
scrap of lOoking-glass, in which they were
so wretched, they had ceased to look they
rose before. day and they labored till dark
and for the rest they vegetated, and a mold
and mildew seemed to have fallen upon them.
One of them was singing, as he went by, n
low, sad strain-a single remembrance meas
ure Of an old childish tune. She sang it over
and over, as if she had forgotten what she
did, till another peevishly asked her to be
done. He remembered, too, the room, still
higher up, where child lay dying-dying as
much from starvation-the starvation of
father and mother before he was born-as
from anything else. The young clerks
orders had been to solicit the rent there, or
to turn the people out. He hesitated at the
scene before him. From that high room in
the hot roof he could see a CLEAN of the sun
set and the river. The child had been lifted
for the sight or for the air; and he lay in his
fathers arms, while the mother, sitting ON
the floor, for there was no other seat in the
room, hid her head in her apron, as if she
could not endure to see the child, or the
world in which he was-a little white, trans
parent creature-the last of five, who had all
gone the same way. As Dunlap had looked
in the door, the child was TRYING tn lift hia