Year: 1874

A Story OF Mystery and Woe.


A more honest fellow than Penning-
ton Smythe never lived. He was young
say twenty-five or three-full of va.
ried amount of enthusiasm, possessed
of an unlimited belief in the goodness
of human nature, and absolutely inca
pable of falsehood.


And yet, curiously enough, he had a
passion for mysteries. Although prac-
tically a commonplace Presbyterian,
he nevertheless affected to believe in
the mysteries of Rosicrucianism. He
was perpetually striving, with conspic-
uous want of success, to magnetic his
friends, and although he was too Or
thodox to believe in Spiritualism, he
lived in constant hopes of inducing his
washstand to move and his writing ta-
BILE to rap, by the patient contact of his
tireless hands. AS for secret societies
they were his delight. He belonged to
nearly every ancient and venerable Or
der of very modern mechanics and gro
cerymen in existence, and kept locked
up in his trunk more faring gilt
badges and aprons trimmed fantasti-
cally, and horse-collars than would
have sufficed to purchase the sover-
eighty of dozen African kingdoms.
And there never was more honest
and straightforward little girl than
Mary Morris, to whom Smythe was en-
gagged to he married. She was Just out
of boarding-school, and her respecta-
bic father-in the wholesale lard bust
ness-and her equally respectable moth
erin the wholesale family business
and all her thirteen brothers and SIS
ters of assorted sexes, were ready to
swear-or affirm, as the case might be
that Mary was as good as gold, and
many times as valuable.


The engagement of these two young
persons was with the full appreciation
OF the elder Snythes and Morrises.
Young Pennington was expected TO
spend three evenings every week with
his betrothed, and they were always &C
commodated with convenient back
parlor, in which to converse after the
manner of their kind. In these cir
cumstances Pennington Smythe ought
to have been happy, but he was not.
There was no mystery about his love
affair, and the fact weighed upon his
spirits.


He did what he could to convince
himself that the respectable old MIR.
Morris, who used to say when Penning-
ton made his appearance, "Now you
children, keep out of that there back
parlor, and give Mary and her young
man show"-was bitterly opposed to
the match, and must be kept from per-
ceiving that his daughter was beloved
by her "young man." But the only
possible way which he could devise to
throw an air of secresy over the affair,
was to write notes to his beloved in q
very cramped hand, and to deliver them
himself. Usually he had to read them
too, since his hand writing was too
mystical to be readily deciphered, and
when they were read they usually con-
tained nothing but an ampli6cation of
the innocuous idea that he, Pennington
Smythe, proposed to love her, Mary
Morris, in spite of every obstacle. As
there were no conceivable obstacles this
statement was not one of tremendous
moment; but still it gave young Smythe
no little comfort to make it in writing
and deliver it with an air of immense
secresy.


One day a happy thought struck him.
How delightful it would be to cores
pond with his darling in cipher. This
idea filed him with calm, mystical
joy that was really a first-class sensa-
ton. So he devised q cipher of the
kind so much in vogue among school
girls, and which consisted in substitute
ing one letter for another, and instantly
wrote brief note to Mary. This he
carried to her the same evening, to.
gether with key, and attained the
mystical delight in transmitting it to
her.


Poor Mary suffered much from this
cipher. It was very hard work for her
to write an Ineligible letter with the
new alphabet. She continually made
mistakes in it, and so kept Pennington
out of his bed for hours, while with
locked doors and shaded windows he
tired to decipher some such sentence as,
II do SO long to see you" It was
only when mistakes were made in the
use OF this cipher that it became at all
difficult of comprehension to an ordina-
ry reader. Poor Pennington had not
devoted much attention to the subject
of cryptography, or he would have
known that there is nothing more trans