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STEPPING STONES TO LITERATURE.

about his being poor-not in whispers to an inti friend, the doors and windows being previously closed; in the public streets! in a loud military voice! alleging poverty as his reason for not taking a particular house.

The ladies of Cranford were already moaning over invasion of their territory by a man and a gentleman. was a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation a neighboring railroad, which had been vehemently p tioned against by the little town; and if, in addition his masculine gender and his connection with the obnoxi railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of being poor wh then, indeed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was true and as common as poverty, yet people never spo about that, loud out in the streets. It was a word not be mentioned to ears polite.

We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be p vented by poverty from doing anything that they wishe If we walked to or from a party it was because the nig was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because seda chairs were expensive. If we wore prints instead of sun mer silks, it was because we preferred a washing material and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact tha we were, all of us, people of very moderate means. O course, then, we did not know what to make of a man wh could speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace. Ye somehow Captain Brown made himself respected in Cran ford, and was called upon in spite of all resolutions to the contrary. I was surprised to hear his opinions quoted as authority, at a visit which I had paid to Cranford, about a year after he had settled in the town.

My own friends had been among the bitterest opponents of any proposal to visit the captain and his daughters only

the tabooed hours before twelve. True, it was to discover the cause of a smoking chimney before the fire was lighted; but still, Captain Brown walked upstairs, nothing daunted, spoke in a voice too large for the room, and joked quite in the way of a tame man, about the house.

He had been blind to all the small slights and omissions of trivial ceremonies with which he had been received. He had been friendly, though the Cranford ladies had been cool; he had answered small, sarcastic compliments in good faith; and with his manly frankness had overpowered all the shrinking that met him as a man who was not ashamed to be poor.

And, at last, his excellent masculine common sense, and his facility in devising expedients to overcome domestic dilemmas, had gained him an extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He, himself, went on in his course, as unaware of his popularity as he had been of the reverse; and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as to make some counsel, which he had given in jest, be taken in sober, serious earnest.

It was on this subject: an old lady had an Alderney cow, which she looked upon as a daughter. You could not pay the short quarter-of-an-hour call without being told of the wonderful milk or wonderful intelligence of this animal. The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betsy Barker's Alderney; therefore, great was the sympathy and regret when, in an unguarded moment, the poor cow tumbled into a lime pit. She moaned so loudly that she was soon heard, and rescued; but meanwhile the poor beast had lost most of her hair, and came out looking naked, cold, and miserable, in a bare skin. Everybody pitied the animal, though a few could not restrain their smiles at her droll appearance.

Miss Betsy Barker absolutely cried with sorrow and dismay; and it was said she thought of trying a bath of oil. This remedy, perhaps, was recommended by some one of the number whose advice she asked; but the proposal, if ever it was made, was knocked on the head by Captain Brown's decided "Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma'am, if you wish to keep her alive. But my advice is, kill the poor creature at once."

Miss Betsy Barker dried her eyes, and thanked the captain heartily; she set to work, and by and by all the town turned out to see the Alderney meekly going to her pasture, clad in dark gray flannel. I have watched her myself many a time. Do you ever see cows dressed in gray flannel in London?

ALL

X. THE PANIC.

BY MRS. ELIZABETH C. S. GASKELL.

at once, all sorts of uncomfortable rumors got afloat in the town. There were one or two robberies - real bona fide robberies; men had up before the magistrates and committed for trial; and that seemed to make us all afraid of being robbed; and for a long time, at Miss Matty's, I know, we used to make a regular tour all round the kitchens and cellars every night, Miss Matty leading the way, armed with poker, I following with the hearth brush, and Martha carrying the shovel and fire irons, with which to sound the alarm; and by the accidental hitting together of them she often frightened us so much that we bolted ourselves up, all three together, in the back kitchen, or storeroom, or wherever we happened to be, till, when our affright was over, we recollected ourselves, and set out afresh with double valiance.

By day we heard strange stories from the shopkeepers

and cottagers, of carts that went about in the dead of the night, drawn by horses shod with felt, and guarded by men in dark clothes, going round the town, no doubt, in search of some unwatched house or some unfastened door.

Miss Pole, who affected great bravery herself, was the principal person to collect and arrange these reports so as to make them assume their most fearful aspect. But we discovered that she had begged one of Mr. Hoggins's wornout hats to hang up in her lobby; and we (at least I) had my doubt as to whether she really would enjoy the little adventure of having her house broken into, as she protested she should. Miss Matty made no secret of being an arrant coward, but she went regularly through her housekeeper's duties of inspection; only the hour for this became earlier and earlier, until at last we went the rounds at half-past six, and Miss Matty adjourned to bed soon after seven, “in order to get the night over sooner." One afternoon about five o'clock we were startled by a hasty knock at the door.

Miss Matty bade me run and tell Martha on no account to open the door until she (Miss Matty) had reconnoitered through the window; and she armed herself with a footstool to drop down on the head of the visitor, in case he should show a face covered with black crape as he looked up in answer to her inquiry of who was there. But it was nobody but Miss Pole and Betty. The former came upstairs, carrying a little hand basket, and she was evidently in a state of great agitation.

"Take care of that!" she said to me, as I offered to relieve her of her basket. "It's my plate. I am sure there is a plan to rob my house to-night. I am come to throw myself on your hospitality, Miss Matty. Betty is going to sleep with her cousin at the George.' I can sit up here all night, if you will allow me to; but my house is so far from

6

any neighbors, and I do n't believe we could be heard if we screamed ever so hard!"

"But," said Miss Matty, "what has alarmed you so much? Have you seen any men lurking about the house?" "Oh, yes!" answered Miss Pole. "Two very bad-looking men have gone three times past the house, very slowly; and an Irish beggar-woman came not half an hour ago, and all but forced herself in past Betty, saying her children were starving and she must speak to the mistress. You see, she said 'mistress,' though there was a hat hanging up in the hall, and it would have been more natural to have said masBut Betty shut the door in her face and came up to me, and we got the spoons together, and sat in the parlor window watching till we saw Thomas Jones going from his work, when we called to him and asked him to take care of us into the town."

ter.

We might have triumphed over Miss Pole, who had professed such bravery, but we were glad to perceive that she shared in the weaknesses of humanity; and I gave up my room to her very willingly, and shared Miss Matty's bed for the night. But, before retiring, the two ladies rummaged up, out of the recesses of their memory, such horrid stories of robbery and murder that I quite quaked in my shoes.

Miss Pole was evidently anxious to prove that such terrible events had occurred within her experience, that she was justified in her sudden panic; and Miss Matty did not like to be outdone, and capped every stone with one yet more horrible, till it reminded me oddly enough, of an old story I had read somewhere, of a nightingale and a musician, who strove one against the other which could produce the most admirable music, till poor Philomel dropped down dead.

One of the stories that haunted me for a long time afterwards was of a girl, who was left in charge of a great house