am the "Gold-Man." It is gold, and the fortune of Guadalupe. Young man, you receive from me the sacred deposit of an old man's only child; swear to me, here in this place which has been for years my field of battle, to be a good and kind husband, and a faithful protector." But, sir-it is not possible-your daughter, rich and wealthy and beautiful, may wish to find her equal." "She knows not the value of her wealth. But, Guadalupe, speak. Wilt thou take this young man for thy husband, to be thy friend and companion when I am gone?" "Father, talk not thus," said the girl, passionately. "I never saw one I liked so much before; but I cannot hear you talk of death." "Walter Bruce, you hear, she is yours; but let us come away from this; I have much to tell you yet, and much to arrange." That evening the Gold-Man told his story -the narrative of his wild adventures in California-of his discovery of the precious metal-of his long and arduous labors, and of their successful termination. He had been ill for more than three months, but had kept this fact a secret from his child. Alarm ed at his expected death, and the difficult position of his daughter, he had partially hinted at his riches to his employers, and had begged them to send him some one to whom he could, without hesitation, give his daughter. Walter and his wife made the best of their way to Vera Cruz, and thence to New York. Gaudalupe grieved bitterly for the death of her kind old father, and her hus band found it necessary to travel constantly to occupy her mind. He invested his vast wealth in good securities, and after a long peregrination through the United States, took ship for Europe. Both himself and his wife took a strong liking to Paris, as do most Americans; and thus it was I met them. They still make it their head-quarters, being less disposed to travel, since the birth of Master Pablo Walter Bruce, which occurred about six weeks back. My friend had intended making public his discovery in California, but scarcely had he arrived in New York, when the rumor reached his ears that California was a gold country; a fact which none perhaps ever had better cause to know than the heir of "The Gold-Man." From Dickens' "Household Words." COOLNESS AMONG THIEVES. SOME years ago, I went, says the governor of a metropolitan prison, as was my daily custom, to the "Reception Ward," which contained the prisoners committed on the preceding day, who yet retained their own clothes. Amongst a herd-for the most part of dirty vagabonds-stood a well-dressed young man, about twenty-five years of age, of fine stature, mild and intelligent countenance. Struck by his appearance, I inquired the cause of his committal. "A lamentable mistake," he replied. "I am accused of having picked the pocket of an officer of the guards, at a bazaar; but I am a gentleman, connected with one of the best families in the country. My name is Hawkesbury. My father is a major in the army; and he will be thrown into a state of great distress by my apprehension." Walter Bruce went to bed that night, but not to sleep; he was half mad with excitement and joy. He rose fevered and excited, but to find his waking visions still real. The next few days were spent in preparations for their departure. Old Pablo, vanquished by the earnest prayers of the young couple, consented to travel, and try the power of medicine. A week later the counter was given up to Jacob Willis, and the caravan set out on its return voyage. A few days later, they reached the schooner, and on the third Sunday from their departure from the dry diggings, Walter and Guadalupe were united in marriage by the joint efforts of the American consul and a Mazatlan priest. Old Pablo did not survive their union ten days; his disease had grown too powerful, and he was buried, contrary to his expectation, far away from his long-estly expressed his thanks; and I left him cherished home. His address was so free from the affectation of distress or excitement, that I really thought there had been some error. I consequently whispered words of consolation; advised an appeal to the home secretary, by his relatives, assuring the young man of prompt redress, should he have been committed wrongfully. He sighed deeply, mod with the persuasion that he was the victim of a mistake. He told me his father had been made acquainted with his arrest, and that steps would forthwith be taken to insure his release. The prisoner was, in due course, clothed in the prison dress, and consigned to the ward allotted to “rogues and vagabonds." | On that very forenoon I was seated in my office, when a stranger, apparently fifty years of age, of elegant exterior, and seeming to labor under irrepressible emotion, was shown in. Sobs seemed to choke his utterance, and some minutes elapsed before he could convey to me that he was "the father of an unhappy young man named Hawkesbury." Then ensued the reiteration of family connections, (a baronet was affirmed to be a relative,) of the deplorable error of so disgraceful a charge against a gentleman of good station, and of the terrible consequences which might result from the communication to certain members of the family. To my recommendation to address himself to the secretary of state, the agonized father replied that the exposure of the family name would be a grave infliction" the thing was impossible!" After a prolonged scene of mental distress, Hawkesbury was left to undergo his sentence of six weeks' imprisonment, with hard labor; and I was implored to treat him with all possible lenity. The young man observed the most unexceptionable conduct, and was in due time discharged. About two years had rolled on since this occurrence, when daily duty took me again to the reception ward; and there, again, amongst the host of delinquents, stood the fashionable "Hawkesworth," now no longer 'Hawkesbury." I started with astonishment, and again had occasion to remark his calm and stoical imperturbability. I received his former protestations of mistake, family connections, &c., &c., with avowed incredulity; and, assuring him that he should not impose upon me a second time, I consigned him to the treadwheel without a grain of my original remorse. He was, on this last occasion, sentenced to imprisonment for three months, for picking a gentleman's pocket at the Italian Opera. The outer gate of the prison is furnished with ponderous knockers; and, while in conversation with a county magistrate, in my office, we were both startled by a knock so long and loud, that it made the whole building reverberate. Presently in stepped a welldressed man, who, in the loudest accents, and with the loftiest carriage, demanded, "Is the governor within ?" The gatekeeper doffed his hat, and with the utmost respect answered in the affirmative. The stranger was accordingly admitted, and rushing up to me, and addressing me by name, seized my hand eagerly, and shook it with the cordiality of an old friend. I was amazed. "You have the advantage of me, sir," said I; "I have not the pleasure to remember you." "No?" said he, with an assumption of gravity. "Why, I had the misfortune to have to seek your good offices two years ago, in behalf of an unfortunate young man, who-" Here I recognized the "major." Suddenly interrupting him, I said, "You don't come to me again about that young man Hawkesworth, do you?" "That is exactly my errand, sir ?" "Then," said I, indignantly, "you will be kind enough, another time, not to take me by the hand, nor to address me with such unauthorized familiarity." "Not take you by the hand, and why not, sir? My name is Howard. I am a Royal Academician. I reside at Cloudesly Terrace, Hammersmith; and I often have the honor to take Sir Robert Peel by the hand, and to dine at his table." I charged the fellow with having personated the major, the father of Hawkesbury, and the relative of a baronet. With unblushing hardihood, he affirmed that I labored under a delusion. He had never stated himself to be" the father" of the young man, but "the intimate friend of the father," and, turning to the magistrate, (whom I had addressed by name in his hearing,) he solicited the honor of a visit from him at " Cloudesley Terrace, Hammersmith," where he should be happy to see him, and disabuse his mind of all suspicion, by proving to him his real name and station. Thereupon, making me a cold and stately bow, he withdrew. As I had supposed, on sending to inquire, neither Cloudesley Terrace nor Mr. Howard were to be found in or near Hammersmith. The subsequent career of these two worthies is soon told. They went on thriftily in their nefarious calling for a few years longer, until, at length, they were apprehended, at Cowes, for picking pockets at a ball of the Yacht Club, to which, doubtless, they had gained admission by finesse. They were taken before the local magistracy, and committed for trial at the ensuing session of assizes. With great dispatch they sued out a writ of habeas corpus, and were, in consequence, taken before a Judge in Chambers, in London, who allowed them to be bailed; but the two fashionable scoundrels decamped to America, doubtless preferring the sacrifice of their bonds to the all but inevitable certainty of transportation. FIERY disputants seem to mistrust their cause or their wit by fleeing for assistance to clamor and passion. He who denies nothing to his own luxury will pardon nothing in another man's. CHRONICLE OF THE WEEK, IN A FIFTH LETTER TO A FRIEND. DID it ever happen to fall within the range of your experience to write letters by rule-and at a definite time-not letters of business, but friendly, gossiping letters, which you felt it a duty to lighten with all the piquancies of speech and pen, at your command! If you have not, you have been spared the infliction of a pleasure which is a mortal pain. It were well to think of this periodic torture, in your strong reflections upon ed itorial life, and to soften your hap-hazard condemnations of editorial stupidity, with a running glance at his constantly recurring necessities. In the brisk air of a November or a March, with a roaring fire, and a wellfilled book-shelf-the pen stirs up a man's thought into healthy hard-working, that luxuriates in toil; but, with the languishing air of fast-coming summer on one's brow, and the sweet, enervating influences of June roses at the elbow-what a dull and stupid implement does the pen become ! The energy of work dies away in the soft gush of sunshine, and the hum of the summer flies lulls you into a sweet inactivity. How coarse and unprofitable all our figures of speech and the happiest flights of fancy in comparison with the leaves of a tree, or the vapory clouds hanging their fleeces to the sun! Who-that, like you, is luxuriating in the hearing of brooks-cares one fig about the city week that has launched us into the middle of June? You know that you are reading my very letters-though the hand is familiar-as if the page were little better than a blank, and as if the city were but a saucy interloper, to be thrusting its noisy brawl into your quiet solitudes. Even now your thought is straying to some broad stream, over which the beeches and hemlocks interlace, keeping the surface dark and cool: and your eye is following your fly upon the ripples, and your ear drinking up greedily the heavy break of some fish below-while you seem to be reading my Chronicle. For all this, however, you may be safely pardoned; for of news proper there is scarce a syllable to tell you. The new costume, about which all ladies are just now agog, is at the top of very much of the current chat, and draws out all sorts of opinions in all sorts of ways. As to whether the innovation will succeed, it would be hardly safe to hazard an opinion. From time to time a lady in the new dress makes her appearance upon the trottoir, to the intense amusement of all the small boys and horse-jockeys, and to the great inconvenience of those who dislike a crowd of starers. The dress is certainly-with such additions as good color, good make, and a jaunty foot-as provokingly pretty a dress as a lady could wear! while on the score of economy, convenience, health, etc., we believe the sisterhood of judges, is nearly unanimous in approval. But, per contra, Turkish fashion will have to combat the shrugs of such ladies as have private reasons for keeping their feet out of sight, and of such short-formed ones, as would be made shorter by the change, and lastly, of those numerous corps of retainers who worship old family traditions, and who would no sooner think of shortening their skirts than of shortening their tongues. In any event, we may be sure of extracting from the stir a little variety of costume, and of studying beauty under a new crowd of disguises. We shall expect to find Punch, too, when he gets wind of the matter, making himself very funny at the cost of the reformers. The old ladies will tell us that this is the price which novelty and enterprise always pays for its ventures; and we shall have abundance of psuedo-independence without doubt. And, between ourselves, my dear fellow, I think that the reformists will have the best of it,—not, perhaps, on the score of wit, or happy equivoque,—but, what is far better, on the side of common sense, propriety, beauty, and fitness. I have kept you even with the current of news about JENNY LIND;-so I must not omit to record her rupture with BARNUM-very likely a peaceable rupture,—but for all that -a rupture. And while the showman makes such use of her name, as I hinted at last week,—no reasonable man will regret the fact. I dare say it will be hard to find a manager who shall combine so many good qualities for JENNY's position, as BARNUM; yet, after all, his instincts are, I greatly fear, of too level a make for consort with the Nightingale of the North. Yon know, my dear fellow, that you may credit all my observations on such heads to my honest convictions; for I am not a favorite with publishers, or museum holders, and am neither beholden to free tickets or to books of presentation, for my talking about singing or poetry. Our steamers, you will hear, have latterly won great honor by some extraordinary passages. Among them all, the Pacific seems to bear the palm, and has won special glory in making the three fastest consecutive passages ever made by an ocean steamer. Speaking of costume for the ladies, reminds me that these are not the only neglected ones, and that we have the promise of a revised fashion for the gentlemen as well as for the ladies. I cut you this morsel of remark thereanent from a British paper : "We are anxious to draw general attention to the subject of costume; that which is now prevalent in Europe being devoid of all the requisites for dignified historic painting, utterly incongruous with sculpture, and no less unfavorable to the living figure, both as regards appearance and convenience. "Not to dwell on serious evils in regard to health and comfort arising from deficiency of ready adaptability to the hourly varia tions of the weather, it is remarkable, at this period of advancing taste in architecture, furniture, and decoration of every inanimate object, that little regard is paid to there are any traces was ever so inconsistent a suitable presence. No costume of which with grace, simplicity, and dignity of aspect, none so uselessly complicated, as a European's of the present day. The unity of the figure is frittered away. Stiff lines couth hat crowns the disfiguration. Groups and angles disguise the body, and an unof men in the ordinary garb gratify no taste but that of caricature: neither painting nor sculpture can advantageously transmit to futurity a faithful representation of any event constituted of such a group. Nor does admixture of female fashions often obviate the difficulty. Family groups of the present date have seldom any charm beyond the kindred circle. To expect from art truthful representations of events in which usual habits, is to expect meanness of asour contemporaries are engaged in their pect to express all that is noble. Interesting as such faithful painting and sculpture Would certainly be to posterity, they must the flowing lines and harmonious colors in remain unattempted until dress displays which Nature and Art delight. Historical subjects must continue to be sought in remote periods, and to exemplify chiefly the imagination of the artist genuine scenes of great interest will remain unknown in this high department of art. already not talked of as up-town, and if the ground spoken of be not immediately purchased for the purpose we advocate, in ten years it will be covered with houses, and our pulse-beat be more clogged a thousand fold than now. We look upon the enlargement of the Battery, despite details of troublesome adjustment of dock and harbor privileges, as a fixed fact. Its consumma Commissioners as to some of the objects | centre of this metropolis. Union Park is which may be admitted to the Exhibition under section three, viz., 'hats' and 'garments' and under section four, models' in any kind of material, (the conditions being that they shall exhibit increased usefulness or improved forms,' 'beauty of design,' and 'such degree of taste as to come under the denomination of fine art,') to exhibit at the approaching most favorable opportunity such forms as may afford a series of transition may be delayed, but no municipal tional changes (to which the public already authority would willingly incur the responevince a decided tendency) from the present sibility of defeating a measure fraught with fashion to a style consistent with the fore- benefits so inestimable to the community." going views and the advanced tastes of the age." Whether it is that our bad show in an Art-way, in the palace of London, has quickened our American sense of need, I do not know ;-but there is talk now in our city, of what will breed better a sense of what is beautiful than all the Exhibitions of all the American Institutes to the end of time. I mean a PARK. Join your gratulations with ours, my dear fellow, at the mere hint of such a measure of grace from the city council. What it is to be or where, I am not well posted about; -if you can make any thing of this paragraph from a contemporary, however, it is very much at your service : The good ladies of the short-dresses must excuse me but if they were to help forward this motion toward breathing places, where they might drive, walk, or saunter away a blue-faced summer day-they would-me judice-be helping on their color and their embonpoint as thriftily as with the shortest of their skirts. THE BOOK WORLD. What on earth shall I tell you of books, in this tepid atmosphere of a city afternoon! Enough are lying around me to craze a man to madness, and yet no single one is cooling enough to put me in critical humor, or to sum up either its merits or demerits. A new start has been made in the way of an Illustrated Paper: but there are strong doubts about its success. It is edited daintily enough; but the designers and wood cutters are either behind the time, or else they are not spurred with enough of pay. The bulletin of the Philadelphia "New Lungs for the City.-Ventilation, on a large scale, is what, just now, we very much want, for crowding brick and mortar stoppers-up of open lots are shutting up every avenue whence the breezy air from our surrounding hills and beautiful waters can blow. Shortly will be returning from the World's Fair, thousands of fellow-citi-Art-Union is by me, and its talk of pictures zens, who, freshly glowing with remembrance and art is grateful in the heat. Philadel of Hyde and Regent's Parks, the Champs phia boasts, and justly, in its population, Elysées, and other noble people-estates aristocratic Europe more liberally provides some of the noblest and most liberal appre than democratic Yankee-land, will seek (if ciators of art in this country; and their artit have not been already done) to lay out union reporter is a fair earnest of the worsimilar openings here. But ere this infusion thiness and taste of their general feeling. of fresh blood be poured into our corporate I have also at hand a prospectus for the body, let us see whether we cannot of ourselves secure this most desirable of objects. publication of an Indian Poem by Mrs. The Committee on Lands and Places have GREENE-favorably known to the public by reported in favor of the proposed new Park, occasional pieces, and by most honorable embracing Jones's woods and the Schemer-mention at the hands of Dr. GRISWOLD. horn estate, between Sixty-sixth and Seventy-fifth streets, and running from the Third Avenue to the East River. The Park will extend over an area of a hundred and fifty acres, is bountifully wooded, has a noble water frontage far more grand than that of the artificial waters in the Parks of London, and the situation is beautiful. This noble lung will in six years be the breathing vent of a neighborhood that ere long will be the Nothing of special novelty is in the publishers' lists, except a new novel from the pen of the author of the Lady Alice. The piquancy and picturesqueness of Mr. HUNTINGTON's first book (whatever people may say of its theology and morality) cannot fail to insure to his second a wide and eager company of readers. |