Bohemian Days

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Bohemian Days, by Geo. Alfred Townsend

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Title: Bohemian Days Three American Tales
Author: Geo. Alfred Townsend
Release Date: September 15, 2006 [EBook #19288]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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BOHEMIAN DAYS
*Three American Tales*
BY GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND "GATH"
"And David arose and fled to Gath. And he changed his behavior. And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him. And the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months."
H. CAMPBELL & CO., Publishers, NO. 21 PARK ROW, NEW YORK
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
THE BURR PRINTING HOUSE AND STEAM TYPE-SETTING OFFICE, Cor. Frankfort and Jacob Sts., NEW YORK.

TO TEN FRIENDS AT DINNER,
GILSEY HOUSE, NEW YORK,
APRIL 21, 1879;
WHO MADE THIS PUBLICATION
A PROMISE AND AN OBLIGATION.

PREFACE.
So far from the first tale in this book being of political motive, it was written among the subjects of it, and read to several of them in 1864. Perhaps the only souvenir of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered a home American picture about contemporary with the European tales.

CONTENTS.
SHORT NOVELS.
THE REBEL COLONY IN PARIS 13
MARRIED ABROAD 99
THE DEAF MAN OF KENSINGTON 155
CHORDS.
BOHEMIA 9
LITTLE GRISETTE 93
THE PIGEON GIRL 149
THE DEAD BOHEMIAN 279

BOHEMIA.
The farther I do grow from La Bohème, The more I do regret that foolish shame Which made me hold it something to conceal, And so I did myself expatriate; For in my pulses and my feet I feel That wayward realm was still my own estate; Wise wagged our tongues when the dear nights grew late, And quainter, clearer, rose our quick conceits, And pure and mutual were our social sweets. Oh! ever thus convivial round the gate Of Letters have the masters and the young Loitered away their enterprises great, Since Spenser revelled in the halls of state, And at his tavern rarest Jonson sung.

THE REBEL COLONY IN PARIS.
* * * * *

I.
THE EXILES.
In the latter part of October, 1863, seven very anxious and dilapidated personages were assembled under the roof of an old, eight-storied tenement, near the church of St. Sulpice, in the city of Paris.
The seven under consideration had reached the catastrophe of their decline--and rise. They had met in solemn deliberation to pass resolutions to that effect, and take the only congenial means for replenishment and reform. This means lay in miniature before a caged window, revealed by a superfluity of light--a roulette-table, whereon the ball was spinning industriously from the practised fingers of Mr. Auburn Risque, of Mississippi.
Mr. Auburn Risque had a spotted eye and a bluishly cold face; his fingers were the only movable part of him, for he performed respiration and articulation with the same organ--his nose; and the sole words vouchsafed by this at present were: "Black--black--black--white--black--white--white--black"--etc.
The five surrounding parties were carefully noting upon fragments of paper the results of the experiment, and likewise Master Lees, the lessee of the chamber--a pale, emaciated youth, sitting up in bed, and ciphering tremulously, with bony fingers; even he, upon whom disease had made auguries of death, looked forward to gold, as the remedy which science had not brought, for a wasted youth of dissipation and incontinence.
They were all representatives of the recently instituted Confederacy. Most of them had dwelt in Paris anterior to the war, and, habituated to its luxuries, scarcely recognized themselves, now that they were forlorn and needy. Note Mr. Pisgah, for example--a Georgian, tall, shapely and handsome, with the gray hairs of his thirtieth year shading his working temples; he had been the most envied man in Paris; no woman could resist the magnetism of his eye; he was almost a match for the great Berger at billiards; he rode like a centaur on the Boulevards, and counterfeited