De Temporibus et Moribus.

LIFE IN A COUNTRY HOTEL.

In these days of elaborate public accommodations, when the word "hotel" has become in many places almost a synonym for the perfection of household elegance and convenience, one hardly cares to give a thought to hotels built forty years ago. But such a hotel forced itself upon my acquaintance when I was too young to sigh for marble halls, or to dream that there could possibly be outside its walls any life more delightful and exciting than mine.

This hotel was a low, square, white, wooden building, whose broad, vine-covered piazzas, looking on the east to the lazilyflowing river and a little Episcopal church, on the north and south through those vistas common in many New England villages,-long, wide, quiet streets, with rows of overarching elms and maples,--and flanked on the west by a deep orchard, went far toward compensating for the inconvenience of the internal arrangements; of which even I, in later days, in spite of my love for the place and the people, became dimly conscious.

But the chief glory and charm of the hotel was its boarders. There was old Dr. Graham, who was as erect as a general, and who treated the ten-year-old girl with the same dignified courtesy which he would have shown toward the woman of thirty. He early became interesting to me. His rooms held

a marvellous collection of birds, pictures, minerals, coins, and curious mechanical contrivances. How was I to know that the stately, white-haired gentleman, who displayed for my benefit the purple crystals of amethystine quartz and the glistening sheets of mica, who allowed me to "smooth" the white heron's back and look into the yellow eyes of the great owl, who taught me to listen for the sweet, subtle notes of the Eolian harp in his north window, who never wearied of looking, with me, at the changing figures in the kaleidoscope, was, in the estimation of the village people, both a traitor and an infidel; inasmuch as his only son had been an officer in the Confederate army, and he, as he himself avowed, in all his minerals, birds, and books, had found no evidence of the existence of a God.

A year or two later I became one of a rather heterogeneous quartette. The most beautiful lady in the world had come with her husband to board at the hotel. City-born and bred, she had the manners and the education which fall to the lot of Fortune's most favored daughters. She was of medium height; but always seemed taller on account of her long, trailing dresses. Her eyes were hazel; but, in certain lights, approached very nearly the color of her curling reddish-golden hair, and her whole face was full of a bright audacity which was not belied by her conversation. This lady's name was Mrs. Burnham, and she was the first member of our quartette.

Mr. Hardy, the hotel clerk, a fierce gentleman with a faint moustache, of whom I stood in mortal terror, and who, in turn, frankly confessed that he was not fascinated with small, homely children, was the second member.

Mrs. Wolcott, a slender, gray-haired, blue-eyed, sweetvoiced Southern woman, was the third, and I the fourth.

We fell into a quartette naturally enough. Mrs. Burnham and Mrs. Wolcott were the only ladies in the hotel whose ages and tastes at all approximated. Both, accustomed to city life,

regarded the country as something to be explored, admired, and wondered at, and since my eyes were in such a state as to render study and play alike impossible, in pity for my forlorn condition, they took me up. Mr. Hardy, as the only gentleman of leisure, was, perforce, our escort. And so we played croquet, and went rowing together in the summer; later, we took long walks for clematis and bitter-sweet; and later still we went sleighing and played whist.

But Mrs. Burnham was the leader in our diversions. She had that New England "smartness" which is usually considered the peculiar property of little women with snapping black eyes and sharp tongues. In a woman of education and culture it would not, of course, display itself as in the genuine, uncultivated, New England "smart" woman. But it was the same thing, after all.

It was this trait which caused her to be at once respected and disliked by the village people. They recognized it when it appeared in the form of an elaborate dress, every bit of which had been planned and cut and made by Mrs. Burnham herself. But in its more unfamiliar phases they did not recognize it, and so were mystified, and, as a result of mystifica tion, grew suspicious. They could not forgive what they could not understand. They did not see that it was the same trait displaying itself in a different manner that often caused Mrs. Burnham to make witty but reprehensible remarks. For instance, at a little evening sociable, a very correct, polished, and conservative gentleman, glancing out of the window, made some observation to her upon the stars. Her eyes flashed a merry glance outside, and then fixed themselves on him, as she said with emphasis, "I see but one." The gentleman, shocked out of his dignity, smiled in return; but it was considered by the village gossips to have been an extremely unbecoming and questionable remark. Mrs. Burnham was always fertile in expedients. When we were out rowing and wished to carry home some of the little fish that crowded around our boat, it

was she who opened her large yellow silk umbrella, and plunging it under water scattered cracker-crumbs over it, and thus drew in a number of unwary fish; proving, as did the astronomer who, in looking at the stars, stumbled over the stones, that fish as well as philosophers cannot, with safety, give their exclusive attention to what is going on overhead.

If any one wished to trim a hat, or play a joke, or get up a charade, it was to Mrs. Burnham that she came first of all. I do not remember that I ever heard her speak about a serious subject. She was always bright, merry, elegant.

If I have as yet said nothing about Mr. Burnham, it is because his part did not come in the first act. He was a pompous, fine-looking, middle-aged gentleman, who was very proud of his wife, and was always arguing with my mother on doctrinal points. I stood in awe of him, partly because I was under the impression that mamma was afraid of him and partly on my own account, because I seldom saw him, as he was away in the city all day. But after a while I had a definite reason for disliking and fearing him. One evening he came home very late in a close carriage, and was conveyed to his room by Mr. Hardy and the ostler as noiselessly as possible. In the morning Mrs. Burnham did not come to breakfast. During the brief time that elapsed between breakfast and dinner, I think she must have grasped the situation, summoned her courage, and decided upon her plan of action; for in all the long time of pain and humiliation that came afterward, there was no other deviation from her customary habits, no outward sign of suffering. Through the summer and the fall Mr. Burnham was oftener and oftener brought home in the carriage; to see him walking with unsteady gait and flushed face became so common as to attract hardly a passing comment, and I, who had always regarded him with a measure of dread, now resolutely avoided him. But one afternoon he came home early and found Mrs. Burnham seated in a low chair reading to me, as I stood beside her. He did not notice me, but, walking

unsteadily across the floor, pushed an ottoman to her feet, sat down, and throwing his arms around her waist, looked into her face. Child as I was, the glance frightened, repelled, and made me ashamed all at once. But she was imperturbable. Neither flush nor shadow crossed her face, and there was no tremor in her voice, as, passing one of her white hands caressingly over his hair, she said lightly, "It may be my lord is weary."

But the end came. Thanksgiving day Mr. and Mrs. Burnham came to dinner as usual. She was dressed carefully and elegantly in a heavy, dark-green silk, and from the beginning of the meal, when little Frankie Wolcott announced, “Mrs. Burnham's dot she new dress on," to the end when the old minister at the head of the table said, "For all Thy mercies, good Lord, we thank Thee," she was the life of the party. Half an hour later we found her, in tears at last, preparing for a speedy departure and a final separation from the hotel and its inmates. Her father arrived in the night, and the next morning she went home with him. Mr Burnham disappeared soon after. Later came mysterious rumors of a forgery; then an account of the arrest of a Mr. George Burnham, and in a few months the report that he was in the State Hospital for the Insane.

During the two years that followed Mrs. Burnham's departure, I was away from the hotel, and on my return the whole family seemed to be changed. Old Dr. Graham was dead, Mrs. Wolcott and Frankie were in California, Mr. Hardy was in a great hotel in the West, and Mrs. Burnham was gone. But in time I grew accustomed to the new order of things, and the old faces began to grow vague and dreamlike.

The new family was a conglomerate affair, gathered, it seemed to me, from the four corners of the earth, so dissimilar were the elements of which it was composed. There was Mr. Lakin, the lumber merchant, with bushy, curly hair, and cunning, disagreeable eyes, who was rich and vulgar and preten