CHAPTER X.

THE WORMS.

IT is the last straw that breaks the camel's back. I had been kneeling, metaphorically speaking, in the court-yard of a caravanserai at Smyrna any time during six months, meekly bowing the hump to the remorselessly accumulated load. I had borne it all; raw silk, figs, dates, flax, hemp, myrrh, ambergris, opium, rhubarb, and magnesia-insult, obloquy, reproach, misrepresentation. I had endured quietly. I knew that I was a Camel, and that it was my lot to be a carrier and not to grumble. I cherished the hope of rising anon, and, hearing the tinkling caravan bells, and, after plodding for many a weary rood through hot sand finding myself at Mecca-I mean at home. I could have borne more burdens even, had they been adjusted with tolerable decency to this patient back. The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the insolence of office, the ferocity of hack-drivers, the sulkiness of railway conductors, the assaults of rowdies, the boys who sell" fig and gum drops" in the cars, the infernal hotel gong, the hardness of the times, gloves at three dollars twenty-five cents a pair, champagne at seven dollars a bottle, cigars at sixty cents apiece, the young lady next door who was perpetually hammering at the valse from Faust, and

always breaking down over the first bar, anything, in fine, you please to mention-anything but this. But there is a limit. to human sufferance. There is a point beyond which it is perilous to pile up the agony of mortal man. I didn't bargain for this. I never contracted to undergo the whole seven plagues of Egypt concentrated into one hideous and abominable nuisance. You will naturally wish to know what the terrible infliction I denounce is like. Stay but a moment and you shall hear.

I was taking my walks abroad in Fifth Avenue, one summer's morn, meaning harm to no man, and with my heart full of sweet and placid feelings towards the United States. I loved pro tem. the Loyal League, admired the Cabinet, and adhered to the Monroe doctrine. Suddenly I saw, advancing towards me with fierce and rapid strides, an Old Lady. Now I am not afraid of ladies. In youth I was wont to be alarmed at them all, the young and the old; but I can bear a great deal of Woman by this time. She has ceased to appal the subscriber; she wouldn't have anything to do with him when he yearned for sympathy; but now, when she has nothing to give, or he, the rather, nothing to accept, she is kind. This was, nevertheless, a very fearsome old lady to look upon. She was tall and wore no crinoline, and was crowned with a coal-scuttle bonnet. She had spectacles, also, and a very hard hickory-looking face beneath them. "This is an old lady from New England," I mused. "I see it all. She is from the State of Massachusetts. Residence East Halleleuia, profession widow, religious proclivities Heterodox Congregational. This is the old lady who is a

great hand at broiling shad, preserving cranberries, scrubbing floors, and making apple pasties and berry pies. Her father was a Deacon; her uncle a Select Man; she has two sons, Zeke and Ike, whom she switches frightfully, and her grandmother, one of the 'hunky girls' of the '76, broke her china teapot after the last family Souchong had been thrown into Boston Harbour and took never another cup of the refreshing beverage until the evacuation of New York by the Britishers." I drew aside to allow this respectable but formidable female to pass; but to pass me was apparently not her aim. She meant mischief. Her eyes were inflamed with ire. Her lips moved as though in wrath. She held in one woollen-gloved hand a monstrous gingham umbrella ; and with it she made as though to strike me down. brandished this weapon of offence, this gingham Excalibur, above her head. She swung it to the right and the left. She brought it down, in the "St. George" with a force and precision which, had I been stricken, must have cloven me from the nave to the chaps.

She

She delivered the carte and the tierce and the reason demonstrative. She was clearly cunning of fence; and I thought I would see her blessed ere I fought with her. Her umbrella was, at last, within an inch of my nose. The hair of

my flesh stood up. This old lady had evidently sworn to have my blood. Conscience makes cowards of us all. But who was she? A Woman's Rights Convention delegate? a Black Republican? a manufacturer of chewing tobacoo? a spiritualist medium? or an abolitionist lecturer ? I had made up my mind for the worst, and was preparing either to

fly or to cast myself at the feet of the vengeful old lady, and sue for mercy. "Transatlantic female," I was on the point of saying, "spare me. I am very sorry for it. I cave in. I am not young, nor tender, but I am an Orphan, and penitent. Spare me, for the sake of your Banner in the Sky, of the Lone Star which shines above the statue of the Father of his Country in Union Square-of that great American eagle who, with untarnished wings, is flapping out the blear and bloodshot eye of Treason and Rebellion all over this vast continent-from the dusty turnpikes of Todd's Tavern to the swampy shores of Bayou Sara. Spare me for the sake of our common blood, our common language, our common creed; for the sweet sake of Shakspeare, who was our common Grandmother-of Spenser, who was our mutual Cousin-german, only ninety-nine times removed-of Milton, who, it is well known, came of a reputable family, down to Salem, Mass., and was educated at Harvard, and who was the common Uncle of us all. Spare me for the sake of Civilisation, Humanity, and the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Nations." I was rehearsing this little speech, the tropes and flourishes in which are, I am free to confess, culled from the vocabulary of Orator Pop, when the old lady rushed by me, still wildly waving her umbrella, but with singular clemency, forbearing to knock my head off. And, looking back, I beheld her still urging on her career down Fifth Avenue, towards Tenth Street, brandishing her gingham all the way. Was she mad? Was she in a spiritual ecstasy, and speeding from a Revival? No, a hasty remark she made as she passed me at once explained the mystery of her proceed

VOL. I.

the mill-wheels in the world. "Here creation's doi d-dest," remarked another; and, quoth a fifth, "I this hyar suckles the ocean-sea considerable."

I went back to the railway dépôt, and found my fr dressed, rosy, and clean shaven. I told him gloomily th had seen the Falls. "Bother the Falls," he remark blithely. "Let's go out and forage for some breakfast." was an old hand at Niagara, and was principally concern at the knowledge that, the season for tourists being at end, the Clifton, the Cataract, and the International, t principal hotels at Niagara, were all closed. We cros the Suspension Bridge, however, on a voyage of discove and, after much hunting about, found on the American s! a third-rate house open, where, for a dollar, we obtained indifferent meal. Then we started to do the lions. Ever thing looked dreary and dingy white, save the Shillib pines, and the negroes, who were of an ashen liver hue. T roads were very slippery; but fortunately we wore clo moccasins, or pedestrianism would have been impossibi Beyond negroes, a few hack-drivers, and the keepers half-a-dozen shanties for the sale of Indian curiosities an ice-creams-ice-creams on the twenty-third of December there did not seem to be any inhabitants at Niagara. Ther is a little straggling village on the British and on the Amer can side, but both have a most woe-begone and povert stricken appearance. The shut-up hotels looked inexpr sibly gaunt and spectral. There were no guides or ho touters about, which was a blessing.

Being on the American side, we crossed a smaller susp