the doctor to the tender mercies of his wife, who, not being gifted with conversational powers, and knowing no way to amuse him, set him to fringing napkins and taking charge of the children, which treatment he seemed to consider a special mark of favor. The minister, as I have remarked, is his opposite in all respects; slightly built, with a mild, melancholy countenance, he looks as if sorrowing for the sins of others, for none has he of his own. Diffident to excess, he never commences conversation without a deep blush suffusing his wan features. It is only in the pulpit this painful consciousness leaves him; then, carried away by the mighty importance of the subject, his eye kindles, the deep mellow tones of his voice, combined with his prophetic fervor, penetrate all hearts, and echo long and loudly in their inmost recesses. Notwithstanding their dissimilarity in character, the physician of the spiritual and the physician of the physical nature were often together, the latter leading the way, and the former walking in his broad shadow-the one ever laughing, the other sighing. It was thus they entered my apartment. "Are you so very ill?" inquired they both in a breath. "Cæsar told us 'his

missis war dying.' แ "Judge for yourselves whether the witches have been tampering with me," I exclaimed. The doctor haw, haw, hawed, in his own loud, rough way; the minister sighed sorrowfully. "You have only a chill," they said. "I am only dying, you mean, for never have I suffered more. Water, water ! Open the windows; run for the fans; off with the blankets; has my head scorched the pillow? Are my eyelashes singed? There is fire enough in this fever to dry up Red River, and burn the raft, thereby saving great expense to the government." Thus raving, I fell asleep, and awoke the next morningwell; but, thanks to the rich soil, and consequent miasma, doomed in three days again to undergo the same martyrdom. Such, gentle reader, is my first experience of a Texian chill.

The bitter oftener than the sweet is a draught we all must quaff. The chalice may be of gold, studded all over with precious gems, and wreathed with flowers, but are its contents the more palatable? Is there not a seeming mockery in the sorrow that comes to us in a gilded form? Yet why these suggestions should arise, unless upon the principle of contraries, Í cannot imagine; for my tale is of those whose palm gold never crossed, and whose daily bread comes from their daily toil.

The lights are shining brightly, and gleaming cheerily through the chinks in VOL. IL-11

neighbor Wade's log cabin, and forms gaily garbed are flitting by. The sight is an unusual one, for Wade is a poor, hardworking man, rising to the plough with the morning twilight, and spending his small earnings in the absolute necessities of life for his numerous family. It is no holiday. It is the busy spring-time, when, wearied with labor, they all retire early for the balmy sleep they so much need. Let us peep through the open window, and see what causes this unusual stir. Ah, see Ruth, the only daughter, bright, blue-eyed Ruth, is dressed in white. She has "snatched a grace beyond the reach of art," and almost a child as she is, with a taste in unison with her years, has adorned her sunny brown curls with wild flowers of every hue. The mother has on her best cap. Wade and his boys are dressed in their Sunday suit, home-made, it is true, but scrupulously neat and clean. The grandmother, knitting Nelly, as she is called, from always having her knitting in hand, for a wonder has laid it aside, and sits in the big arm-chair, smoothing down her capacious apron. Happier is Ruth standing there with her simple attire, her gloveless hands, without ribbons, jewelry or lace, than the royal French empress, with pearls, velvet, and diamonds. Health and contentment are her dowry, and she has them without stint. She smiles, how confidingly, on the tall athletic youth by her side, whom the minister, in his sad, solemn voice is now pronouncing hers for weal or woe. And so it has been a wedding,-and our pretty little Ruth, the idol of her parents, the pride of the neighborhood, and the darling of those many brothers, is to leave on the morrow for her new home. The morrow has come. Why are tears in the mother's eye, why falters the father's voice? Ruth is to be separated from them only a day's ride. She is married to an honest though poor man, whose strong arm will bar the door against want. They love each other

why sadden their happiness! Can it be that shadows of future sorrow, visions of sudden death shed their funeral blight over the rich mosaic of the scene?

The bridal pair mount their horses, for carriage they have none, and set out upon their journey. Suddenly the sky becomes overcast, the lightnings flash, the thunder rolls solemnly, tall trees wave to the winds and lie uprooted in their path, and the "garnered fulness of the clouds" descends upon their devoted heads. Poor Ruth, in her thin muslin dress, without shawl or other protection from the rain, "bides the pelting of the pitiless storm." William's stern employer, though rolling in wealth, was a tyrant to his hirelings,

and bade him be at his post that night,and so they rode on. Let us not blame the newly-married man. His bride of a few hours-how could he leave her, or how could he himself remain when their mutual support depends on his retaining his place! The bayous were swam, the dangers of the road over, and they alight in the dim twilight at their own cabin;— truly a cheerless home for the drenched travellers. It consists of a solitary room, with only a bed, table, and three chairs. No cheerful fire blazes upon the mud hearth, no kind mother is there to change her wet garments, and no friend to proffer assistance. A cold chill creeps over her. She sickens. Her husband, too, complains of fever, and soon they are in a critical state. A messenger is despatched to her parents with tidings of her danger. The father reads the message in the bearer's eye, and exclaiming, "My daughter is dying," swoons away. He becomes delirious, and raves about his darling child. The mother, anxious almost to insanity, cannot desert her sick husband, even for a daughter's dying bed. The messenger returns; no mother, no father with him. And must Ruth, the loving, loved, and lovely, but recently so joyous and happy with youth, health, and the wealth of a true heart just pledged her, must she

murmur her last low words in strangers' ears?

It is sad indeed! On a low pallet by her side lies stretched the once strong man, now feeble as an infant. The light has fled from his eye, the color from his cheek, and his parched lips utter only confused sounds. O life! O death! what mysteries are ye! The bride of last week sighing, sobbing, has passed to the spirit land. William rouses not to a sense of his loss till after her burial. He now weeps like an infant, and the scalding tears course down his pallid cheeks for hours at a time. He wanders to the grave of his buried love, and there mourns like the dove for its mate. Will he ever recover the shock? I ask, and look round at the many widowers who have consoled themselves with a second marriage. But then his happiness was so fresh and new, and the loss so grievously sudden and unexpected.

To return to the father,―he lingered three days after his daughter's departure, when the silver cord was loosed and the golden bowl was broken. The bereaved mother and heart-broken widow now moves about her lowly home, trying to repress her tears and groans for the sake of those whom God has spared her.

open files are of various forms and sizes, curved, rounded, flat, &c. They are made of steel or of hoop-iron, and by a machine which punches the holes at the same time that it raises the teeth. The form is given to the file after the holes and teeth have been made.

Having the tools, the material must be prepared, and this is common plaster of Paris. Suppose the work projected is an erect statue, the process is as follows:A pair of irons corresponding to the bones of the legs in direction, though not necessarily in shape, must be set up on a platform, rising nearly as high as the hips, with the lower ends bent sideways in order to have a good anchorage in the plaster which is to form the base of the

statue. Around these irons the base is commenced by pouring a sufficient quantity of mixed plaster to form it. We have thus before us a platform of plaster, with a pair of irons standing in it. The statue must now be built up with bricks and mortar.

The bricks are made of plaster, and the mortar is plaster and water.

The bricks are made by laying down a piece of oil-cloth upon the floor and pouring upon it a quantity of plaster, made liquid with water. So soon as this begins to harden, it must be scored, like short-cake, so that when quite set or hard, it may be easily broken into many fragments of various shapes and sizes.

Having a quantity of those bricks on one side, and a barrel of mixed (fluid) plaster on the other, and a trowel in the hand, the work is commenced by sopping a brick in the fluid plaster, and placing it against the base and side of one of the irons; and then another and another, filling in the crevices with plaster-mortar. Thus the work goes on, until the body is reached, when it is continued in the same way, except that a cavity is left in the centre, to be closed at the neck,-which is made solid, — and reopened in the head.

To this

Having the figure (legs, body, and head) up, the chisels are now to be used in roughing it into the general human shape. This done, the arms are to be added. A long brick is sopped at one end in fluid plaster, and placed against one shoulder. It soon adheres, and forms the nucleus of the upper arm. is added another long brick, to form the forearm. Additions are then made to fill the arm out. The whole is now gone over with the chisels, taking off here and adding there, as may be found necessary, until the chisels are no longer required. Then the open files come into play. They act like planes, and soon produce even surfaces, taking off all irregularities. The trowels are still useful in filling up cavities and making slight additions. Small brushes are useful when very little is to be added.

It is necessary to cover the bricks entirely with a coating of plaster, for otherwise they will appear, and disturb the harmony of the surface. The surface, moreover, should be kept quite clean, else the plaster will not adhere. It should always be brushed before putting new plaster on, and, in case the work has been laid aside for a long time, the whole surface

must be scraped or filed before beginning anew; otherwise the plaster will not adhere firmly.

If an alteration be desired in the position of the head, the arms, or even the body, it can be made by sawing the parts in two, and then reuniting them by forcing fluid plaster (with a syringe) into the fissures. The arms can be taken off and finished separately, putting them on from time to time to see the effect.

It is unnecessary to keep the model wet; the dryer it is the better.

There are other details of the process which would require too much space to specify.

The advantages of this process of modelling over the clay process are numerous I will mention a few of them.

The plastering is unchangeable; it neither shrinks nor swells, and it does not require wetting and covering with cloths or oil-cloths, to keep it intact and in order.

No moulding is necessary to transfer the form from clay to plaster. The model for the marble is not a cast; but the plaster-figure, as it came from the artist's hands, is itself the model.

The process is less tedious than claymodelling, for by means of the open files more can be done with plaster in a day than with clay in several days.

A clay model cannot be changed materially after it has once been commenced; for the iron skeleton which sustains every part of it is a fixture. But in the plastermodel, the iron frame-work is only in the legs, all the rest can be cut apart, and varied from the original design in accordance with any afterthought of the artist; and this is a very great advantage.

Modelling in plaster is not new, but my way of doing it is new; at least, I know of none who have done it, if I except such as have been instructed by me. But my method would offer very little advantage over the old way of working in clay, were it not for the open file, an instrument quite new and of my own invention. It is made by a machine constructed by me for the purpose, and which produces them rapidly and with very little manual labor.

In Florence there are models of statues several hundreds of years old, done evidently in plaster, but roughly done. The difficulty always has been to finish a plaster-model. By my method, and with my instruments, the highest finish can be obtained with ease.

H. POWERS.

I

CHAPTER IV.

IN WHICH I LEARN WHO THEY ARE.

WAS soon at the parsonage, and, as it was too early for the minister to have relaxed from his task of sermon-work, I walked round to the garden at the back of the house. There I found Jasper, hoe in hand, whistling merrily as he waged war against the weeds, which had, apparently, availed themselves of a temporary suspension of hostilities, and made a stand against the foreign intruders upon their native soil.

"Jasper," said I, "who is it that lives in the large house on the river road, about two miles from here?"

"The big house with the two rows of trees behind it?" he asked in his turn.

"To be sure," said I; "there is but one that I can mean. Who lives there?"

"Queer man, sir, queer man, sir!" he replied, shaking his head mysteriously, and resuming his work with great gravity. "Queer or not," I answered, "I suppose he has a name, hasn't he?"

"Name!" he responded, "name enough, sir, for the matter of that! Bad name, too, sir."

'Well, what is it, then? It won't hurt me, will it? Tell me, I'm not afraid of it," said I.

"Mr. Miles Allerton is his name, sir. They call him Colonel Allerton. But I don't think he's any business to be called so here."

"Why not? Why shouldn't he be called so, if he be a colonel?" I asked.

"I don't think they ought to call such sort of folk so," he replied, "it a'nt right. It makes me mad to hear 'em."

"Why, what's the matter with him, Jasper?" I asked, my curiosity being a good deal aroused. "He's an honest man, I suppose, isn't he?"

"I don't know that," he replied, with an emphatic stroke of the hoe into the ground; we didn't use to think such kind of folks none too honest. But times is changed from what they used to be." 66 He pays his debts, don't he? He isn't a swindler, I hope?" said I, laughing. "O Lord, yes, sir, he pays his debts well enough. Why, he's the richest man this side Boston, they say!"

“Well, then, in the name of every thing mysterious, what ails him? He isn't a Democrat, is he?" I persisted, for I had moused out that Mr. Bulkley was a

staunch Federalist, of the extremest sort, like most of his profession in New England at that time, and that Jasper was no whit behind him in zeal.

"O Lord, no, sir!" he exclaimed, with a sort of deprecating tone, as if he had really gone too far, in having excited such a suspicion, "not a Dimmocrat! He an't so bad as that, sir! He's only an Old Tory."

I laughed heartily at Jasper's distinction; for, like Yorick, I do love a good one, in my heart; and, after all, there is something respectable in a well-preserved good old prejudice, always provided that it is old enough. An old gentleman in breeches and hair-powder is a respectable object in all eyes, while a man in a five years'-old coat is one justly contemptible to every well-regulated mind. There was something very comic in this conflict of prejudices in Jasper's mind. But, on the ethical theory of somebody (I forget who) of doing the duty that lay nearest him, he honestly hated the Democrat of the present generation more than the Tory of the last.

"What amuses you so much?" said a voice behind me, and, looking round, I saw Mr. Bulkley, who had come out to take a turn before tea; "has Jasper been saying something witty?"

"Rather wise, sir, than witty," I replied (for I was a fierce Federalist, too), and I told the minister what had passed between us, and the occasion.

Ah, that's one of the few points of difference between me and Jasper," said Mr. Bulkley, smiling, "he has no charity for the Tories, and thinks it a weakness in people that they are beginning to forget to hate them. But every body has not such a memory as you, Jasper. It doesn't last for fifty years, generally."

"I shall never get to like a Tory," replied Jasper, doggedly, "if I live fifty years more. They're too mean."

"Nor a Democrat, either, I suppose ?" said the minister, laughing.

"No, indeed, sir," answered Jasper, con spirito, "not if I live a hundred."

Mr. Bulkley and I laughed again, and then paced up and down, side by side, the centre walk of the garden, which was nicely edged with box, and hard with wellrolled gravel.

"So you took shelter at Colonel Allerton's," said he, "during the thundershower. You were in luck, for it is not

easy to get admission there. And did you see Miss Eleanor, too?"

I told him all the circumstances of my adventure, and concluded by begging him to let me know who these mysterious people were.

"All I know about them," he replied, "is soon told. You must have heard of the famous Tory, John Allerton, so notorious in Colonial history before the Revolution. He was Attorney-General, and afterwards Judge of Admiralty under the Crown, in Hutchinson's time, and went away with the Tories. Well, this gentleman is his son, who, at the time the siege was formed, was in college, and, not being recalled in season, was cut off from the town, and prevented from joining his family. We kept him, together with other members of Tory families, in the same predicament, women and children, chiefly, in a sort of honorable captivity, as hostages for the good treatment of the families of the patriots who were detained in Boston. I was acquainted with Judge Allerton's family, and was able to make the young man more comfortable than he would have been otherwise."

"Was there no communication between these prisoners at large, in and out of the town, and their families, all that time?" I inquired.

"When a flag was sent in or out on other business," he replied, "open letters, to be inspected by the authorities on either side, might be exchanged. That was all that could be allowed. I tried to get permission for young Allerton to go into the town, when it became tolerably certain that it must be evacuated; but the apprehension of the mischief that the British troops might do, as they retreated, prevented our parting with any pledge of their good behavior. He was sent to Halifax, however, in the first cartel that came in for exchange of prisoners afterwards."

"And what was his history then?" I asked.

"I merely know its outlines," replied Mr. Bulkley. "The British Government behaved well, as you know, to the loyalists who had suffered in its cause. Judge Allerton received a liberal compensation (though necessarily not a full one) for his losses, and was appointed Chief Justice of Barbadoes, where he died. This son, the only child he had, received a commission in the army, and rose early to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He resigned, however, many years ago, on his marriage with Esther Arbuthnot."

"And who was she, sir?" I inquired.

"She was the daughter of Peter Arbuthnot, another famous Tory. He was Registrar-General. I remember her well, before the siege, as a pretty little girl. Her father was made a commissary, and afterwards became a contractor, and made a large fortune in Mr. Pitt's first war against the French Revolution. This, I presume, all went to his daughter, Mrs. Allerton, for his only son died before him, in Jamaica, of the yellow fever. I knew him well, poor fellow, and so did your father."

"And Mrs. Allerton is dead, too, I suppose," said I.

"Yes, she died ten years or more ago, in the south of England, where they lived after their marriage, chiefly."

"And how came they in this country again?" I inquired, "and when did they come?"

"They came about two years ago," he replied, "but the why and wherefore I do not profess to know. Mr. Hayley, his man of business in Boston, told me that it was to look after the landed estates of his great-uncle, Ralph Clarke, who died without heirs, just as Madison's War begun, in 1812, and which escheated to the State. He has sent in a petition to the General Court, and is prosecuting it; but the estates are hardly valuable enough to account for such an exertion, even if his chance for getting them were better than it is like to be."

"But how came they here?" I asked ; "what particular attraction drew them to Wensley, of all places in the world?"

"Why, I believe I must do my modesty the violence to say that I consider myself a main cause of that," responded the minister. "I was in Boston, attending the Convention,* during election week, just at the time he arrived in town from New-York, where he came from England, and happened to meet him at dinner at General Bradstreet's. He remembered our old acquaintanceship, which was renewed the sooner that I was almost the only one surviving of his former friends. He came up to visit me, and just at that time the estate where he now lives was for sale. Old Mr. Remington, whose father built it early in the last century, was just dead, and his third wife, promoted to be his widow, preferred living in Boston, where her wisdom has been justified," he went on, laughing, "by her marrying, the other day, Dr. Hobart, of the New East Church."

"And so he bought the Remington estate," suggested I, to bring him back from this episode.