"On the contrary, I'm interested."

"What do you think of spiritualism, Miss Brown?"

“I've witnessed none of the phenomena, but I don't see why the testimony of these times, in regard to them, should n't be taken as readily as that of centuries back."

"My father is a believer," said Onslow; "and I have certainly seen some unaccountable things, — tables lifted into the air, instruments of music floated about, and played on without visible touch, human hands, palpable and warm, coming out from impalpable air: all very queer and very inexplicable! But what do they prove? Cui bono? What of it all?"

"Nothing in it!' as Sir Charles Coldstream says of the Vatican," interposed Laura.

"You demand the use of it all, - the cui bono, do you?" retorted Kenrick. "Did it ever occur to you to make your own existence the subject of that terrible inquiry, cui bono?"

"Certainly," replied Onslow, laughing; "my cui bono is to fight for the independence of the new Confederacy."

"And for the propagation of slavery, eh?" returned Kenrick. "I don't see the cui bono. On the contrary, to my fallible vision, the world would be better off without than with you. But let us take a more extreme case. These youths - Tom, Dick, and Harry—who give their days and nights, not to the works of Addison, but to gambling, julep-drinking, and cigar-smoking, who hate and shun all useful work, and are no comfort to anybody, - only a shame and affliction to somebody, can you explain to me the cui bono of their corrupt and unprofitable lives?"

"But how undignified in a spirit to push tables about and play on accordions!

"Well, what authority have you for the supposition that there are no undignified spirits? We know there are weak and wicked spirits in the flesh; why not out of the flesh? A spirit, or an intelligence claiming to be one, writes an ungrammatical sentence or a pompous commonplace, and signs Bacon to it; and you forthwith exclaim, 'Pooh! this can't come from a spirit.' How do you know that? May n't lies be told in other

worlds than this? Will the ignoramus at once be made a scholar, the dullard a philosopher, the blackguard a gentleman, - the sinner a saint, the liar truthful, — by the simple process of elimination from this husk of flesh? Make me at once altogether other than what I am, and you annihilate me, and there is no immortality of the soul."

"But what has the ghost contributed to our knowledge during these fourteen years, since he appeared at Rochester? Of all he has brought us, we may say, with Shakespeare, 'There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that.""

"I'll tell you what the ghost has contributed, not at Rochester merely, but everywhere, through the ages. He has contributed himself. You say, cui bono? And I might say of ten thousand mysteries about us, cui bono? The lightning strikes the church-steeple, cui bono? An idiot is born into the world, cui bono? It is absurd to demand as a condition of rational faith, that we should prove a cui bono. use may exist, and we be unable to see it. men are continually thrusting into the faces of the investigators of these phenomena this preposterous cui bono?”

6.6

A good or a And yet grave

Enough, my dear Mr. Kenrick!" exclaimed Laura.

But he was not to be stopped. He rose and paced the room, and continued: "The cui bono of phenomena must of course be found in the mind that regards them. 'I can't find you both arguments and brains,' said Dr. Johnson to a noodle who thought Milton trashy. One man sees an apple fall, and straightway thinks of the price of cider. Newton sees it, and its suggests gravitation. One man sees a table rise in the air, and cries: 'It can't be a spirit; 't is too undignified for a spirit!' Mountford sees it, and the immortality of the soul is thenceforth to him a fact as positive as any fact of science." "Your story, dear Mr. Kenrick, your story!" urged Laura. "My story is ended. The ghost has come and vanished." "Is that all?" whined Laura. "Are n't we, then, to have a

story?"

"In mercy give us some music, Miss Brown," said Onslow.

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Play Yankee Doodle, with variations," interposed Kenrick. "Not unless you'd have the windows smashed in," pleaded Onslow; and, giving his arm, he waited on Clara to the piano.

"She dashed into a medley of brilliant airs from operas, uniting them by extemporized links of melody to break the abruptness of the transitions. The young men were both connoisseurs; and they interchanged looks of gratified astonishment.

"And now for a song!" exclaimed Laura.

Clara paused a moment, and sat looking with clasped hands at the keys. Then, after a delicate prelude, she gave that song of Pestal, already quoted.* She gave it with her whole soul, as if a personal wrong were adding intensity to the defiance of her tones.

Kenrick, wrought to a state of sympathy which he could not disguise, had taken a seat where he could watch her features while she sang. When she had finished, she covered her face with her hands, then, finding her emotion uncontrollable, rose and passed out of the room.

"What do you think of that, Charles?" asked Onslow.

"It was terrible," said Kenrick. "I wanted to kill a slaveholder while she sang."

“But she has the powers of a prima donna," said Onslow, turning to Laura.

"Yes, one would think she had practised for the stage."

Clara now returned with a countenance placid and smiling. "How long do you stay in New Orleans, Miss Brown? inquired Onslow.

"How long, Laura?" asked Clara.

"A week or two."

"We shall have another opportunity, I hope, of hearing you sing."

"I hope so."

"I have an appointment now at the armory. Charles, are you ready to walk?"

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No, thank you. I prefer to remain.”

Onslow left, and, immediately afterwards, Laura's mother being seized with a timely hemorrhage, Laura was called off to attend to her. Kenrick was alone with Clara. Charming opportunity! He drew from her still another and another song. He conversed with her on her studies, on the books

*See Chapter XII. page 112.

she had read, — the pictures she had seen. He was roused by her intelligence and wit. He spoke of slavery. Deep as was his own detestation of it, she helped him to make it deeper. What delightful harmony of views! Kenrick felt that his time had come. The hours slipped by like minutes, yet there he sat chained by a fascination so new, so strange, so delightful, he marvelled that life had in it so much of untasted joy.

Kenrick was not accustomed to be critical in details. He looked at general effects. But the most trifling point in Clara's accoutrements was now a thing to be marked and remembered. The little sleeve-button dropped from the band round her throat. Kenrick picked it up, examined it, saw, in characters so fine as to be hardly legible, the letters C. A. B. upon it. ("B. stands for Brown," thought he.) And then, as Clara put out her hand to receive it, he noticed the bracelet she wore. "What beautiful hair!" he said. He looked up at Clara's to trace a resemblance. But his glance stopped midway at her eyes. "Blue and gray!" he mur

mured.

"Yes, can you read them?" asked Clara.

"What do you mean?"

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'Only a dream I had. There's a letter on them somebody is to open and read."

"O, that I were a Daniel to interpret!" said Kenrick.

At last Miss Tremaine returned. Her mother had been dangerously ill. It was an hour after midnight. Sincerely astounded at finding it so late, Kenrick took his leave. Heart and brain were full. "Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all I can desire, O love!"

And how was it with Clara? Alas, the contrariety of the affections! Clara simply thought Kenrick a very agreeable young man handsome, but not so handsome as Onslow; clever, but not so clever as Vance!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A LETTER OF BUSINESS.

"This war's duration can be more surely calculated from the moral progress of the North than from the result of campaigns in the field. Were the whole North to-day as one man on the moral issues underlying the struggle, the Rebellion were this day crushed. God bids us, I think, be just and let the oppressed go free. Let us do his bidding, and the plagues cease."― Letter from a native of Richmond, Va.

HE following letter belongs chronologically to this stage in our history:

TH

From F. Macon Semmes, New York, to T. J. Semmes, New

Orleans.

"DEAR BROTHER: I have called, as you requested, on Mr. Charlton in regard to his real estate in New Orleans. Let me give you some account of this man. He is taxed for upwards of a million. He inherited a good part of this sum from his wife, and she inherited it from a nephew, the late Mr. 'Berwick, who inherited it from his infant daughter, and this last from her mother Mother, child, and father- - the whole Berwick family · were killed by a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi some fifteen or sixteen years ago.

"In the lawsuit which grew out of the conflicting claims of the relatives of the mother on the one side, and of the father on the other, it was made to appear that the mother must have been killed instantaneously, either by the inhalation of steam from the explosion, or by a blow on the head from a splinter; either cause being sufficient to produce immediate death. It was then proved that the child, having been seen with her nurse alive and struggling in the water, must have lived after the mother, thus inheriting the mother's property. But it was further proved that the child was drowned, and that the father survived the child a few hours; and thus the father's heir became entitled to an estate amounting to upwards of a million of dollars, all of which was thus diverted from the Aylesford family (to whom the property ought to have gone), and bestowed on a man alien in blood and in every other respect to all the parties fairly interested.

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