Miriam Monfort | Page 5

foot on the threshold of his own house, nay,
on the broad, quiet pavement of his own street, with its stately row of
ancient Lombardy poplars on one side, and blank, high-walled
lumber-yard on the other, he felt himself a sovereign--king of a
principality! king of a neighborhood;--what great difference is there,
after all?
It was only the hypochondriacal character of his mind that shielded him
from that chief human absurdity, pomposity. He needed all the praise
and consolation his friends could bestow simply to sustain him--no
danger of inflation in his case! He was shut away from
self-complacency (the only vice to which virtue is subjected) by the
melancholy that permeated his being, and which was probably in his
case an inheritance--constitutional, as it is said to be with things.
Perhaps it will be well to give, in this place, some more vivid idea of
our home, which, after all, like the shell of the sea-fish, most frequently
shapes itself to fit the necessities and habits of its occupants.
Our house had been built in early times, and was essentially
old-fashioned, like the part of the city in which it was situated.. My
father, soon after his arrival in America, had fancied and purchased this
gloomy-looking gray stone edifice, with its massive granite steps
(imported at great cost, before the beautiful white-marble quarries had

been developed which abound in the vicinity of, and characterize the
dwellings of, that rare and perfect city), and remodelled its interior,
leaving the outside front of the building, with its screens of ancient ivy,
untouched and venerable, and changing only the exterior aspect of the
back of the mansion. Very striking was the contrast between the rear
and front and exterior and interior of "Monfort Hall," as it was
universally called.
The dark panel-work within had all been rent away, to give place to
plaster glossy as marble, or fine French papers, gilded and painted, or
fresco-paintings done with great cost and labor, and indifferent success.
The lofty ceilings and massive walls formed outlines of strength and
beauty to the large and well-ventilated apartments, which made it easy
to render them almost palatial by the means of such accessories and
appliances as wealth commands, and which were lavished in this
instance.
The back of the house was, however, truly picturesque. Here a bay
window was judiciously thrown out; there a portico appended or
hanging balcony added to break the gray expanse of wall or sullen glare
of windows; and a small gray tower or belfry, containing a clock that
chimed the hours, and a fine telescope, rose from the octagon library
which my father had built for his own peculiar sanctum after my
mother's death, and which formed an ell to the building. The green,
grassy, deeply-shadowed lawn lay behind the mansion, sloping down
into a dark, deep dell, across which brawled a tiny brook long since
absorbed by the thirsty earth thrown out from many foundations of
stores and tenements and great warehouses hard by; a dell where once
roses, lilacs, guelder-globes, and calacanthus-bushes, grew with a vigor
that I have nowhere seen surpassed.
It was not much the fashion then to have rare garden-flowers. Our
conservatory contained a fair array of these, but we had beds of tulips,
hyacinths, and crocuses, basking in the sunshine, and violets and lilies
lying in the shadow such as I see rarely now, and which cost us as little
thought or trouble in their perennial permanence, whereas the
conservatory was an endless grief and care, although superintended by

a thoroughly-taught English gardener, and kept up at unlimited
expense.
My sister--for so I was taught to call Evelyn Erle--revelled in this floral
exclusiveness, but to me the dear old garden was far more delightful
and life-giving. I loved our sweet home-flowers better than those
foreign blossoms which lived in an artificial climate, and answered no
thrilling voice of Nature, no internal impulse in their hot-house growth
and development. What stirred me so deeply in April, stirred also the
hyacinth-bulb and the lily of the valley deep in the earth--warmth,
moisture, sunshine and shadow, and sweet spring rain--and the same
fullness of life that throbbed in my veins in June called forth the rose.
There was vivid sympathy here, and I gave my heart to the
garden-flowers as I never could do to the frailer children of the
hot-house, beautiful as they undeniably are.
"Miriam has really a vulgar taste for Nature, as Miss Glen calls it,"
Evelyn said one day, with a curl of her slight, exquisite lip as she shook
away from her painted muslin robe, the butter-cups, heavy with
moisture and radiant with sunshine, which I had laid upon her knee.
"She ought to have been an Irish child and born, in a hovel, don't you
think