Sea and Shore | Page 3

feel a little
languid this morning, and I should be poor company. Besides, I cannot
surrender my position as one of the young folks yet."
"Nay, I have something to say to you--something very earnest. You
shall be at no trouble to entertain me; but you must not refuse a poor,
sad fellow a word of counsel and cheer. I shall think hard of you if you
decline to let me drive you a little way. Besides, the freshness of the
morning is all lost on you there. Now, set Marion a good example, and
she will, in turn, enliven me later."
So adjured, I consented to drive to the Fifteen-mile House with Major
Favraud, and Duganne glided into the coach in my stead, to take my
place and play _vis-à-vis_ to Sylphy, who, as usual, was selected as
traveling-companion on this occasion, "to take kear of de young
ladies."
"I am so glad I have you all to myself once more, Miss Harz! I feel now
that we are fast friends again. And I wanted to tell you, while I could
speak of her, how much my poor wife liked you. (The time will come
when I must not, dare not, you know.) But for circumstances, she
would have urged you to become our guest, or even in-dweller; but you
know how it all was! I need not feign any longer, nor apologize either."
"It must have been that she saw how lovely and spirituelle I found
_her_," I said, "and could not bear to be outdone in consideration, nor
to owe a debt of social gratitude. She knew so little of me. But these
affinities are electric sometimes, I must believe."
"Yes, there is more of that sort of thing on earth, perhaps, 'than is
dreamed of in our philosophy'--antagonism and attraction are always
going on among us unconsciously."

"I am inclined to believe so from my own experience," I replied,
vaguely, thinking, Heaven knows, of any thing at the moment rather
than of him who sat beside me.
"Your mind is on Wentworth, I perceive," he said, softly; after a short
pause, "now give up your dream for a little while and listen to this
sober reality--sober to-day, at least," he added, with a light laugh.
"By-the-way, talking of magnetism, do you know, Miss Harz, I think
you are the most universally magnetic woman I ever saw? All the men
fall in love with you, and the women don't hate you for it, either."
"How perfectly the last assertion disproves the first!" I replied; "but I
retract, I will not, even for the sake of a syllogism, abuse my own sex;
women are never envious except when men make them so, by casting
down among them the golden apple of admiration."
"I know one man, at least, who never foments discord in this way!
Wentworth, from the beginning, had eyes and ears for no one but
yourself, yet I never dreamed the drama would be enacted so speedily; I
own I was as much in the dark as anybody."
I could not reply to this _badinage_, as in happier moments I might
have done, but said, digressively:
"By-the-by, while I think of it, I must put down on my tablet the order
of Mr. Vernon. He wants 'Longfellow's Poems,' if for sale in Savannah.
He has been permeating his brain with the 'Psalms of Life,' that have
come out singly in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, until he craves
every thing that pure and noble mind has thrown forth in the shape of a
song."
And I scribbled in my memorandum-book, for a moment, while Major
Favraud mused.
"Longfellow!" he said, at last, "Phoebus, what a name!" adding
affectedly, "yet it seems to me, on reflection, I have heard it before. He
is a Yankee, of course! Now, do you earnestly believe a native of New
England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know, can be any
thing better than a poll-parrot in the poetical line?"
"Have we not proof to the contrary, Major Favraud?"
"What proof? Metre and rhyme, I grant you--long and short--but show
me the afflatus! They make verse with a penknife, like their wooden
nutmegs. They are perfect Chinese for ingenuity and imitation, and the
resemblance to the real Simon-pure is very perfect--externally. But

when it comes to grating the nut for negus, we miss the aroma!"
"Do you pretend that Bryant is not a poet in the grain, and that the
wondrous boy, Willis, was not also 'to the manner born?' Read
'Thanatopsis,' or are you acquainted with it already? I hardly think you
can be. Read those scriptural poems."
"A very smooth school-exercise the first, no more. There is not a
heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willie--he failed egregiously, when
he attempted to