man leisure, to the door of the small inn where I had designed to breakfast. Thinking it probable that the people of the house, in so small a village, would be too simple to make any dangerous comments upon our appearance, I politely handed the countess out of the carriage, and ordered plates for two. "It is scarce worth while," she said, as she heard the order, "for I shall remain at the door on the look-out. The eil-waggen for Trieste, which was to leave Gratz an hour after us, will be soon here, and, (if my friends have served me well,) Percie in it. St. Mary speed him safely!" She strode away to a small hillock to look out for the lumbering diligence, with a gait that was no stranger to "doublet and hose." It soon came on, with its usual tempest of whip-cracking and bugle-blasts, and nearly overturning a fat burgher, who would have proffered the assistance of his hand, out jumped a petticoat, which, I saw, at a glance, gave a very embarrassed motion to gentleman Percie. "This young lady," said the countess, dragging the striding and unwilling damsel into the little parlour where I was breakfasting, "travels under the charge of a deaf old brazier, who has been requested to protect her modesty as far as Laybach. Make a curtsey, child!" "I beg pardon, sir!" began Percie. 66 Hush, hush! no English! Walls have ears, and your voice is rather gruffish, mademoiselle. Show me your passport! Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, eighteen years of age, blue eyes, nose and chin middling, etc.! There is the conductor's horn. Allez vite! We meet at Laybach. Adieu, charmante femme! Adieu!" And with the sort of caricatured elegance which women always assume in their imitations of our sex, Countess Iminild, in frock-coat and trowsers, helped into the diligence, in hood and petticoat, my "tiger" from Cranbournealley! horses toiled out from the pine forest, and stood, fetlock deep in sand, on the brow of a small hill overlooking the mushroom village of Saratoga. One or two straggling horsemen were returning late from their afternoon ride, and looked at us, as they passed on their fresher hacks, with the curiosity which attaches to new comers in a watering-place: here and there a genuine invalid, who had come to the waters for life, not for pleasure, took advantage of the coolness of the hour, and crept down the foot-path to the spring; and as Horace encouraged his flagging cattle into a trot, to bring up gallantly at the door of " Congresshall," the great bell of that vast caravansary resounded through the dusty air; and by the shuffling of a thousand feet, audible as we approached, we knew that the fashionable world of Saratoga were rushing down, en masse, “to tea." Having driven through a sand-cloud for the preceding three hours, and-to say nothing of myself-Van Pelt being a man who, in his character as the most considerable beau of the university, calculated on his first impression, it was not thought advisable to encounter, uncleansed, the tide of fashion at that moment streaming through the hall. We drove round to the side door, and gained our pigeon-hole quarters under cover of the back staircase. The bachelors' wing of Congress-hall is a long, unsightly wooden barrack, divided into chambers, six feet by four, and of an airiness of partition which enables the occupant to converse with his neighbour three rooms off, with the ease of clerks calling out entries to the ledger across the desks of a countinghouse. The clatter of knives and plates came up to our ears in a confused murmur; and Van Pelt having refused to dine at the only inn upon the route, for some reason best known to himself, I commenced the process of a long toilet with an appetite not rendered patient by the sounds of cheer below. I had washed the dust out of my eyes and mouth, and, overcome with heat and hunger, I knotted a cool cravat loosely round my neck, and sat down in the one chair. "Van Pelt!" I shouted. "Are you dressed?" "Dressed? I am as pinguid as a páté de foie gras-greased to the eyelids in cold-cream." I took up the sixpenny glass, and looked at my own newly-washed physiognomy. From the temples to the chin it was one unmitigated red-burned to a blister with the sun! I had been obliged to deluge my head like a mop, to get out the dust; and not naturally remarkable for my good looks, I could, much worse than Van Pelt, afford these startling additions to my disadvantages. Hunger is a subtle excuse-finder, however; and remembering that there were five hundred people in this formidable crowd, and all busy with satisfying their appetites, I trusted to escape observation, and determined to "go down to tea." With the just-named number of guests, it will easily be understood why it is impossible to obtain a meal at Congress-hall out of the stated time and place. In a white roundabout, a checked cravat, my hair plastered over my eyes à la Mawworm, and a face like the sign of the "Rising Sun," I stopped at Van Pelt's door. "The most hideous figure my eyes ever looked upon !" was his first consolatary observation. "Handsome or hideous," I answered, "I'll not starve! So here goes for some bread and butter." And, leaving him to his "appliances," I descended to the immense hall which serves the comers to Saratoga for dining, dancing, and breakfasting, and in wet weather, between meals, for shuttlecock and promenading. Two interminable tables extended down the hall, filled by all the beauty and fashion of the United States. Luckily, I thought, for me, there are distinctions in this republic of dissipation, and the upper end is reserved for those who have servants to turn down the chairs, and stand over them: the end of the table nearest the door, consequently, is occupied by those whose opinion of my appearance is not without appeal, if they trouble their heads about it at all; and I may glide in, in my white roundabout, (permitted in this sultry weather,) and retrieve exhausted nature in obscurity. An empty chair stood between an old gentleman and a very plain young lady, and seeing no remembered faces opposite, I glided to the place, and was soon lost to apprehension in the abysm of a cold pie. The table was covered with meats, berries, bottles of chalybeate water, tea-appurtenances, jams, jellies, and radishes; and, but for the absence of the roast, you might have doubted whether the meal was breakfast or dinner, lunch or supper. Happy country! in which any one of the four meals may serve a hungry man for all. The pigeon-pie stood, at last, well quarried before me, the débris of the excavation heaped upon my plate; and, appetite appeased, and made bold by my half-hour's obscurity, I leaned forward, and perused, with curious attention, the long line of faces on the opposite side of the table, to some of whom, doubtless, I was to be indebted for the pleasures of the coming fortnight. My eyes were fixed on the features of a talkative woman just above, and I had quite forgotten the fact of my dishabille of complexion and dress, when two persons entered, who made considerable stir among the servants, and eventually were seated directly opposite me. "We loitered too long at Barhydts's," said one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, as she pulled her chair nearer to the table, and looked around her with a glance of disapproval. In following her eyes, to see who was so happy as to sympathize with such a divine creature, even in the loss of a place at table, I met the fixed and astonished gaze of my most intimate friend at the university. "Ellerton !" "Slingsby !" Overjoyed at meeting him, I stretched both hands across the narrow table, and had shaken his nearly off his shoulders, and asked him a dozen questions, before I became conscious that a pair of large, wondering eyes were coldly taking an inventory of my person and features. Van Pelt's unflattering exclamation, upon my appearance at his door, flashed across my mind like a thunder-stroke; and, colouring through my burned skin to the temples, I bowed, and stammered I know not what, as Ellerton introduced me to his sister! To enter fully into my distress, you should be apprized that a correspondence, arising from my long and constant intimacy with Tom Ellerton, had been carried on for a year between me and his sister; and that, being constantly in the habit of yielding to me in matters of taste, he had, I well knew, so exaggerated to her my personal qualities, dress, and manners, that she could not, in any case, fail to be disappointed in seeing me. Believing her to be at that moment two thousand miles off, in Alabama, and never having hoped for the pleasure of seeing her at all, I had foolishly suffered this good-natured exaggeration to go on, pleased with seeing the reflex of his praises in her letters, and, heaven knows! little anticipating the disastrous interview upon which my accursed star would precipitate me. As I went over, mentally, the particulars of my unbecomingness, and saw Miss Ellerton's eyes resting inquisitively and furtively on the mountain of pigeon-bones lifting their well-picked pyramid to my chin, I wished myself an inkfish at the bottom of the sea. Three minutes after, I burst into Van Pelt's room, tearing my hair and abusing Tom Ellerton's good nature, and my friend's headless drosky, in alternate breaths. Without disturbing the subsiding blood in his own face by entering into my violence, Horace coolly asked me what was the matter. I told him. "Lie down here," said Van Pelt, who was a small Napoleon in such trying extremities" lie down on the bed, and anoint your phiz with this unguent. I see good luck for you in this accident, and you have only to follow my instructions. Phil Slingsby sunburnt, in a white roundabout, and Phil Slingsby pale and well-dressed, are as different as this potted cream and a dancing cow. You shall see what a little drama I'll work out for you!" I lay down on my back, and Horace kindly anointed me from the trachea to the forelock, and from ear to ear. 'Egad," said he, warming with his study of his proposed plot, as he slid his fore-finger over the bridge of my nose, every circumstance tells for us. Tall man as you are, you are as short-bodied as a monkey, (no offence, Phil!) and when you sit at table, you are rather an undersized gentleman. I have been astonished every day these three years at seeing you rise after dinner in Commons' Hall. A thousand to one Fanny Ellerton thinks you a stumpy man. "And then, Phil," he continued, with a patronizing tone, "you have studied minute philosophy to little purpose if you do not know that the first step in winning a woman to whom you have been over-praised, is to disenchant her at all hazards, on your first interview. You will never rise above the ideal she has formed, and to sink below it gradually, or to remain stationary, is not to thrive in your wooing." Leaving me this precocious wisdom to digest, Horace descended to the foot of the garden to take a warm bath; and, overcome with fatigue and the recumbent posture, I soon fell asleep, and dreamed of the great blue eyes of Fanny Ellerton. The soaring of the octave flute in "Hail, Columbia!" with which the band was patriotically opening the ball, woke me from the midst of a long apologetic letter to my friend's sister; and I found Van Pelt's black boy, Juba, waiting patiently at the bedside, with curling-tongs and Cologne water, ordered to superintend my toilet by his master, who had gone early to the drawingroom to pay his respects to Miss Ellerton. With the cold cream disappeared entirely from my face the uncomfortable redness to which I had been a maryr; and, thanks to my ebony coiffeur, my straight and plastered locks soon grew as different to their "umquhile guise" as Hyperion's to a satyr's. Having appeared to the eyes of the lady, in whose favour I hoped to prosper, in red and white (red phiz and white jacket,) I trusted that in white and black (black suit and pale visnomy,) I should look quite another person. Juba was pleased to show his ivory in a complimentary smile at my transformation, and I descended to the drawing-room on the best terms with the coxcomb in my bosom. Horace met me at the door. "Proteus redivivus!" was his exclamation. "Your new name is Wrongham. You are a gentleman senior, instead of a bedevilled sophomore, and your cue is to be poetical. She will never think again of the monster in the white jacket, and I have prepared her for the acquaintance of a new friend whom I have just described to you." I took his arm, and with the courage of a man in a mask, went through another presentation to Miss Ellerton. Her brother had been let into the secret by Van Pelt, and received me with great ceremony as his college superior; and as there was no other person at the springs who knew Mr. Slingsby, Mr. Wrongham was likely to have an undisturbed reign of it. Miss Ellerton looked hard at me for a moment, but the gravity with which I was presented and received, dissipated a doubt if one had arisen in her mind, and she took my arm to go to the ball-room with an undisturbed belief in my assumed name and character. I commenced the acquaintance of the "Surprised! Ehem! I know the gentleman. fair Alabamian with great advantages. Tom's fidus Achates, and proposed lover Received as a perfect stranger, I pos- of my own. But you don't seem sursessed, from long correspondence with prised!" her, the most minute knowledge of the springs of her character, and of her favourite reading and pursuits; and, with the little knowledge of the world which she had gained on a plantation, she was not likely to penetrate my game from my playing it too freely. Her confidence was immediately won by the readiness with which I entered into her enthusiasm and anticipated her thoughts: and before the first quadrille was well over, she had evidently made up her mind that she had never in her life met one who so well "understood her." Oh, how much women include in that apparently indefinite expression, "he understands me!" The colonnade of Congress Hall is a long promenade laced in with vines and columns, on the same level with the vast ball-room and drawing-room; and (the light of heaven not being taxed at Saratoga) opening at every three steps by a long window into the carpeted floors. When the rooms within are lit on a summer's night, that cool and airy colonnade is thronged by truants from the dance, and collectively by all who have anything to express that is meant for one ear only. The mineral waters of Saratoga are no less celebrated as a soporific for chaperons, than as a tonic for the dyspeptic; and while the female Argus doses in the drawing-room, the fair Io and her Jupiter (represented in this case, we will say, by Miss Ellerton and myself) range at liberty the fertile fields of flirtation. I had easily put Miss Ellerton in surprised good humour with herself and me during the first quadrille; and, with a freedom based partly upon my certainty of pleasing her, partly on the peculiar manners of the place, I coolly requested that she would continue to dance with me for the rest of the evening. "One unhappy quadrille excepted," she replied, with a look meant to be mournful. "May I ask with whom?" "Oh, he has not asked me yet, but my brother has bound me over to be civil to him-a spectre, Mr. Wrongham, a positive spectre !'' "How denominated?" I inquired, with a forced indifference, for I had a presentiment I should hear my own "Then did you ever see such a monster? Tom told me he was another Hyperion. He half admitted it himself, indeed-for, to tell you a secret, I have corresponded with him a year!" "Giddy Miss Fanny Ellerton !—and never saw him!" He sat at supper in a white jacket and red face, with a pile of bones upon his plate like an Indian tumulus." "Never till to-night! "And your brother introduced you?" 66 Fanny," said her brother, coming up at the moment," Slingsby presents his apologies to you for not joining your cordon to-night-but he's gone to bed with a headache." "Indigestion, I dare say," said the young lady. "Never mind, Tom, I'll break my heart when I have leisure. And now, Mr. Wrongham, since the spectre walks not forth to-night, I am yours for a cool hour on the colonnade." Vegetation is rapid in Alabama, and love is a weed that thrives in the soil of the tropics. We discoursed of the lost Pleïad and the Berlin bracelets, of the five hundred people about us, and the feasibility of boiling a pot on five hundred a-year-the unmatrimonial sum-total of my paternal allowance. She had as many negroes as I had dollars, I well knew, but it was my cue to seem disinterested. "And where do you mean to live, when you marry, Mr. Wrongham?" asked Miss Ellerton, at the two-hundreth turn on the colonnade. "Would you like to live in Italy?" I asked again, as if I had not heard her. "Do you mean that as a sequitur to my question, Mr. Wrongham?" said she, half stopping in her walk, and, though the sentence was commenced playfully, dropping her voice at the last word with an emotion I could not mistake. I drew her off the colonnade to the small garden between the house and the spring, and in a giddy dream of fear and surprise at my own rashness and success, I made, and won from her, an avowal of preference of love. Matches have been made more suddenly. (To be continued.) PERCIE, MY PAGE, OR, A LEGACY OF A LADY. (Concluded from page 45.) SPITE of remonstrance on my part, the imperative countess, who had asserted her authority more than once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the company of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate in an evening walk around the town. Fearing that Percie's masculine stride would betray him, and objecting to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I opposed the freak as long as it was courteous--but it was not the first time I had learned that a spoiled woman would have her own way, and, too vexed to laugh, I soberly promenaded the broad avenue of the capital of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and a dame en valet. It was but a few hours posting hence to Planina; and Iminild, who seemed to fear no risk out of a walled city, waited on Percie to the carriage on the following morning, and in a few hours we drove up to the rural inn of this small town of Littorale. VOL. I. (4.) P. 54. I had been too much out of humour to ask the countess, a second time, what errand she could have in so rustic a neighbourhood. She had made a mystery of it, merely requiring of me that I should defer all arrangements for the future, as far as she was concerned, till we had visited a spot in Littorale, upon which her fate in many respects depended. After twenty fruitless conjectures, I abandoned myself to the course of circumstances, reserving only the determination, if it should prove a haunt of Yvain's troop, to separate at once from her company and await her at Trieste. Our dinner was preparing at the inn, and tired of the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence, I walked out and seated myself under an immense linden, that every traveller will remember, standing in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and blacksmith of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and outhouses. The tree seems the father of the village. It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to dispute the shade with a congregation of cows and double-jointed E |