Semi=weekly graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1895-1902, 1896-07-29
The Melancholy !IuSSaf.
BY THOMAS HARDY.
Icops rieht. L.. ly tlle Aath 1r

lonely place le IS impossible to avoid
hearing, amid the scourings of the wind
over the grass bents and thistles, the old
trumpet and bugle calls, the rattle of
the halters; to help seeing rows of spec
trail tents and the impedimenta of the
soldiery. From within the canvases come
cultural syllables Of foreign tongues and
broken songs of the fatherland, for they
were mainly regiments of the king S
German legion that slept round the tent
poles hereabout at that time,
1t was nearly 80 years ago. The Brit
ish uniform Of the period, with its
immense epaulets, queer cooked hat,
breeehes, CATERS, ponderous cartridge
box, buekled shoes and what not, would
look strange and barbarous now. Ideas
have changed; invention has followed
invention. Soldiers were monumental
objects then A divinity still hedged
kings here and there, and war was con-
sidered glorious thing.
Secluded old manor houses and ham
lets lie in the rayines and hollows among
these hills, where stranger had hardly
ever been seen till the king chose to take
VIC b1tbAlo J Nv b1tO GEtlollO NtSbCL
place few miles to the south, as a con-
sequence of which battalions descended
in cloud upon the open country around.
Is it necessary to add that the echoes of
many episode tales, dating from that
picturesque time, still linger about here
in more or less fragmentary form, to be
caught by the attentive ear. Some Of
them 1 have repeated; most Of them
have forgotten; one have never repeat.
ed and assuredly can never forget.
Phyllis told me the story with her
own lips. She was then am old lady of
70 and her auditor lad of 10. She en-
joined silence as to her share in the Incl
dent till she should be dead, buried
and forgotten. Her life was prolonged
II years after the day of her narration,
aud she has now been dead nearly 90.
The oblivion which in her modesty and
humility she courted for herself has
only partially fallen upon her, with the
unfortunate result of infiicting an in
justice upon her memory, since such
fragments of her story as got abroad at
the time and have been kept alive ever
since are precisely those which are most
unfavorable to her character.
1t all began with the arrival OF the
York hussars, one Of the foreign regi-
ments above alluded to. Before that day
scarcely a soul had been seen near her
fathers house for weeks. When noise
like the brushing skirt of visitor was
heard on the doorstep, it proved to be
scudding Leaf, when q carriage seemed
to be nearing the door it was her father
grinding his sickle ON the stone in the
garden for his fayorite relaxation of
trimming the box tree borders to the
plots. A sound like luggage thrown
down from the coach was a gun far
away at sea, and what looked like tall
man by the gate at dusk was a yew bush
cut into a quaint and attenuated shape.
There is no such solitude in country
places now as there was in those old
days
Yet all the while King George and
his court were at Weymouth, not more
than five miles off.
The daughters seclusion was great,
but beyond the seclusion of the girl lay
the seclusion of the father If her social
condition was twilight, his was dark
ness. Yet he enjoyed his darkness, while
her twilight oppressed her DR.. Grove
had been professional man whose taste
for lonely meditation over metaphysical
questions had diminished his practice
till it no longer paid him to keep it go
ing, after which he had relinquished Ii
and hired at nominal rent the small,
dilapidated manor house of this obscure
inland nook, to make sufficieney of an
income which in town would have
been inadequate for their maintenance.
He staid i'll his garden the greater part
of the day, growing more and more irri-
table with the lapse of time and the in
creasing perception that he had wasted
his life in the pursuit of illusions, He
saw his friends less aud less frequently
Phyllis became SO shy that if she met
stranger anywhere in her short rambles
she felt ashamed at his gaze, walked
awkwardly and blushed to her she...li 5e:sS
Yet Phyllis was discovered even here
by an admirer and her hand most unex-
pectedly asked in marriage.
The king, as aforesaid, was at Wey-
mouth, where he had taken up his
abode at Gloucester lodge, and his pres
ence in the town naturally brought
many county people thither. Among
these idlers-maHy of whom professed
to have connections and interests with
the eourt--was one Humphrey Gould, a
bachelor, q parsonage neither young nor
old, neither good looking nor positively
plain. Too steady going to be "a buck
(as fast and unmarried men were then
ealled) he was an approximately fash
ionable man of mild type This bach
elor of 80 found his way to the village
on the down, beheld Phyllis, made her
fathers acquaintance in order to make
hers, and by some means or other she
sufficiently infiamed his heart to lead
him in that direction almost daily, till
he became engaged to marry her.
As he was of an old local family,
some Of whose members We're held in
respect in the county, Phyllis, in bring
ing him to her feet, had accomplished
what was considered a brilliant move
for one in her constrained position.
How she had done it was NOT quite
known to Phyllis herself. In those days
unequal marriages We're regarded rather
as violating the laws of nature than az
u mere infringement of convention, the