The Lost Palace

The Lost Palace

[From the Ingham Papers.]

“Passengers for Philadelphia and New York will change cars.”

This annoying and astonishing cry was loudly made in the palace-car “City of Thebes,” at Pittsburg, just as the babies were well asleep, and all the passengers adapting themselves to a quiet evening.

“Impossible!” said I, mildly, to the “gentlemanly conductor,” who beamed before me in the majesty of gilt lace on his cap, and the embroidered letters P. P. C. These letters do not mean, as in French, “to take leave,” for the peculiarity of this man is, that he does not leave you till your journey’s end: they mean, in American, “Pullman’s Palace Car.” “Impossible!” said I; “I bought my ticket at Chicago through to Philadelphia, with the assurance that the palace-car would go through. This lady has done the same for herself and her children. Nay, if you remember, you told me yourself that the `City of Thebes’ was built for the Philadelphia service, and that I need not move my hat, unless I wished, till we were there.”

The man did not blush, but answered, in the wellmannered tone of a subordinate used to obey,

Here are my orders, sir; telegram just received here from headquarters: `”City of Thebes” is to go to Baltimore.’ Another palace here, sir, waiting for you.” And so we were trans-shipped into such chairs and berths as might have been left in this other palace, as not wanted by anybody in the great law of natural selection; and the “City of Thebes” went to Baltimore, I suppose. The promises which had been made to us when we bought our tickets went to their place, and the people who made them went to theirs.

Except for this little incident, of which all my readers have probably experienced the like in these days of travel, the story I am now to tell would have seemed to me essentially improbable. But so soon as I reflected, that, in truth, these palaces go hither, go thither, controlled or not, as it may be, by some distant bureau, the story recurred to me as having elements of vraisemblance which I had not noticed before. Having occasion, nearly at the same time, to inquire at the Metropolitan station in Boston for a lost shawl which had been left in a certain Brookline car, the gentlemanly official told me that he did not know where that car was; he had not heard of it for several days. This again reminded me of “The Lost Palace.” Why should not one palace, more or less, go astray, when there are thousands to care for? Indeed had not Mr. Firth told me, at the Albany, that the worst difficulty in the administration of a strong railway is, that they cannot call their freight-cars home? They go astray on the line of some weaker sister, which finds it convenient to use them till they begin to show a need for paint or repairs. If freight-cars disappear, why not palaces? So the story seems to me of more worth, and I put it upon paper.

It was on my second visit to Melbourne that I heard it. It was late at night, in the coffee-room of the Auckland Arms, rather an indifferent third-class house, in a by-street in that city, to which, in truth, I should not have gone had my finances been on a better scale than they were. I laid down, at last, an old New York “Herald,” which the captain of the “Osprey” had given me that morning, and which, in the hope of home-news, I had read and read again to the last syllable of the “Personals.” I put down the paper as one always puts down an American paper in a foreign land, saying to myself, “Happy is that nation whose history is unwritten.” At that moment Sir Roger Tichborne, who had been talking with an intelligent-looking American on the other side of the table, stretched his giant form, and said he believed he would play a game of billiards before he went to bed. He left us alone; and the American crossed the room, and addressed me.

“You are from Massachusetts, are you not?” said he. I said I had lived in that State.

“Good State to come from,” said he. “I was there myself for three or four months,—four months and ten days precisely. Did not like it very well; did not like it. At least I liked it well enough: my wife did not like it; she could not get acquainted.”

“Does she get acquainted here?” said I, acting on a principle which I learned from Scipio Africanus at the Latin School, and so carrying the war into the enemy’s regions promptly. That is to say, I saw I must talk with this man, and I preferred to have him talk of his own concerns rather than of mine.

“O sir, I lost her,—I lost her ten years ago! Lived in New Altoona then. I married this woman the next autumn, in Vandalia. Yes, Mrs. Joslyn is very well satisfied here. She sees a good deal of society, and enjoys very good health.”

I said that most people did who were fortunate enough to have it to enjoy. But Mr. Joslyn did not understand this bitter sarcasm, far less resent it. He went on, with sufficient volubility, to give to me his impressions of the colony,—of the advantages it would derive from declaring its independence, and then from annexing itself to the United States. At the end of one of his periods, goaded again to say something, I asked why he left his own country for a “colony,” if he so greatly preferred the independent order of government.

Mr. Joslyn looked round somewhat carefully, shut the door of the room in which we were now alone,—and were likely, at that hour of the night, to be alone,—and answered my question at length, as the reader will see.

“Did you ever hear of the lost palace?” said he a little anxiously.

“They don’t tell of it, sir. Sometimes I think they do not know themselves. Does not that seem possible?” And the poor man repeated this question with such eagerness, that, in spite of my anger at being bored by him, my heart really warmed toward him. “I really think they do not know. I have never seen one word in the papers about it. Now, they would have put something in the papers,—do you not think they would? If they knew it themselves, they would.”

“Knew what?” said I, really startled out of my determination to snub him.

“Knew where the palace is,—knew how it was lost.”

By this time, of course, I supposed he was crazy. But a minute more dispelled that notion; and I beg the reader to relieve his mind from it. This man knew perfectly well what he was talking about, and never, in the whole narration, showed any symptom of mania,—a matter on which I affect to speak with the intelligence of the “experts” indeed.

After a little of this fencing with each other, in which he satisfied himself that my ignorance was not affected, he took a sudden resolution, as if it were a relief to him to tell me the whole story.

“It was years on years ago,” said he. “It was when they first had palaces.”

Still thinking of Nimrod’s palace and Priam’s, I said that must have been a great while ago.

“Yes, indeed,” said he. “You would not call them palaces now, since you have seen Pullman’s and Wagner’s. But we called them palaces then. So many lookingglasses, you know, and tapestry carpets and gold spitboxes. Ours was the first line that run palaces.”

I asked myself, mentally, of what metal were the spit-boxes in Semiramis’s palace; but I said nothing.

“Our line was the first line that had them. We were running our lightning express on the `Great Alleghanian.’ We were in opposition to everybody, made close connections, served supper on board, and our passengers only were sure of the night-boat at St. Louis. Those were the days of river-boats, you know. We introduced the palace feature on the railroad; and very successful it was. I was an engineer. I had a first-rate character, and the best wages of any man on the line. Never put me on a dirt-dragger or a lazy freight loafer, I tell you. No, sir! I ran the expresses, and nothing else, and lay off two days in the week, besides. I don’t think I should have thought of it but for Todhunter, who was my palace conductor.”

Again this IT, which bad appeared so mysteriously in what the man said before. I asked no question, but listened, really interested now, in the hope I should find out what IT was; and this the reader will learn. He went on, in a hurried way:—

“Todhunter was my palace conductor. One night he was full, and his palace was hot, and smelled bad of whaleoil. We did not burn petroleum then. Well, it was a splendid full moon in August; and we were coming down grade, making up the time we had lost at the Brentford junction. Seventy miles an hour she ran if she ran one. Todhunter had brought his cigar out on the tender, and was sitting by me. Good Lord! it seems like last week.

“Todhunter says to me, `Joslyn,’ says he, `what’s the use of crooking all round these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?’ You see, we were just beginning to crook round, so as to make that long bend there is at Chamoguin; but right across the valley we could see the stern lights of Fisher’s train: it was not more than half a mile away, but we should run eleven miles before we came there.”

I knew what Mr. Joslyn meant. To cross the mountain ranges by rail, the engineers are obliged to wind up one side of a valley, and then, boldly crossing the head of the ravine on a high arch, to wind up the other side still, so that perhaps half an hour’s journey is consumed, while not a mile of real distance is made. Joslyn took out his pencil, and on the back of an envelope drew a little sketch of the country; which, as it happened, I still preserve, and which, with his comments, explains his whole story completely. “Here we are,” said he. “This black line is the Great Alleghanian,—double track, seventy pounds to the yard; no figuring off there, I tell you. This was a good straight run, down grade a hundred and seventy-two feet on the mile. There, where I make this X, we came on the Chamoguin Valley, and turned short, nearly north. So we ran wriggling about till Drums here, where we stopped if they showed lanterns,—what we call a flagstation. But there we got across the valley, and worked south again to this other X, which was, as I say, not five-eighths of a mile from this X above, though it had taken us eleven miles to get there.”

He had said it was not more than half a mile; but this half-mile grew to five-eighths as he became more accurate and serious.

“Well,” said he, now resuming the thread of his story, “it was Todhunter put it into my head. He owns he did. Todhunter says, says he, `Joslyn, what’s the use of crooking round all these valleys, when it would be so easy to go across?’

“Well, sir, I saw it then, as clear as I see it now. When that trip was done, I had two days to myself,—one was Sunday,—and Todhunter had the same; and he came round to my house. His wife knew mine, and we liked them. Well, we fell talking about it; and I got down the Cyclopaedia, and we found out there about the speed of cannon-balls, and the direction they had to give them. You know this was only talk then; we never thought what would come of it; but very curious it all was.”

And here Mr. Joslyn went into a long mathematical talk, with which I will not harass the reader, perfectly sure, from other experiments which I have tried with other readers, that this reader would skip it all if it were written down. Stated very briefly, it amounted to this: In the old-fashioned experiments of those days, a cannon-ball travelled four thousand and one hundred feet in nine seconds. Now, Joslyn was convinced, like every other engineman I ever talked to, that on a steep down-grade he could drive a train at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. This is thirteen hundred and fourteen feet in nine seconds,—almost exactly one-third of the cannon-ball’s velocity. At those rates, if the valley at Chamoguin were really but five-eighths of a mile wide, the cannon-ball would cross it in seven or eight seconds, and the train in about twenty-three seconds. Both Todhunter and Joslyn were good enough mechanics and machinists to know that the rate for thirty-three hundred feet, the width of the valley, was not quite the same as that for four thousand feet; for which, in their book, they had the calculations and formulas; but they also knew that the difference was to their advantage, or the advantage of the bold experiment which had occurred to both of them when Todhunter had made on the tender his very critical suggestion.

The reader has already conceived the idea of this experiment. These rash men were wondering already whether it were not possible to leap an engine flying over the Chamoguin ravine, as Eclipse or Flying Childers might have leaped the brook at the bottom of it. Joslyn believed implicitly, as I found in talk with him, the received statement of conversation, that Eclipse, at a single bound, sprang forty feet. “If Eclipse, who weighed perhaps one thousand two hundred, would spring forty feet, could not my train, weighing two hundred tons, spring a hundred times as far?” asked he triumphantly. At least, he said that he said this to Todhunter. They went into more careful studies of projectiles, to see if it could or could not.

The article on “Gunnery” gave them just one of those convenient tables which are the blessing of wise men and learned men, and which lead half-trained men to their ruin. They found that for their “range,” which was, as they supposed, eleven hundred yards, the elevation of a forty-two pounder was one degree and a third; of a ninepounder, three degrees. The elevation for a railway train, alas! no man had calculated. But this had occurred to both of them from the beginning. In descending the grade, at the spot where, on his little map, Joslyn made the more westerly X, they were more than eleven hundred feet above the spot where he had made his second, or easterly X. All this descent was to the advantage of the experiment. A gunner would have said that the first X “commanded” the second X, and that a battery there would inevitably silence a battery at the point below.

“We need not figure on it,” said Todhunter, as Mrs. Joslyn called them in to supper. “If we did, we should make a mistake. Give me your papers. When I go up, Monday night, I’ll give them to my brother Bill. I shall pass him at Faber’s Mills. He has studied all these things, of course; and he will like the fun of making it out for us.” So they sat down to Mrs. Joslyn’s waffles; and, but for Bill Todhunter, this story would never have been told to me, nor would John Joslyn and “this woman” ever have gone to Australia.

But Bill Todhunter was one of those acute men of whom the new civilization of this country is raising thousands with every year; who, in the midst of hard hand-work, and a daily duty which to collegians and to the ignorant men among their professors seems repulsive, carry on careful scientific study, read the best results of the latest inquiry, manage to bring together a first-rate library of reference, never spend a cent for liquor or tobacco, never waste an hour at a circus or a ball, but make their wives happy by sitting all the evening, “figuring,” one side of the table, while the wife is hemming napkins on the other. All of a sudden, when such a man is wanted, he steps out, and bridges the Gulf of Bothnia; and people wonder, who forget that for two centuries and a half the foresighted men and women of this country have been building up, in the face of the Devil of Selfishness on the one hand, and of the Pope of Rome on the other, a system of popular education, improving every hour.

At this moment Bill Todhunter was foreman of Repair Section No. II on the “Great Alleghanian,”—a position which needed a man of first-rate promptness, of great resource, of good education in engineering. Such a man had the “Great Alleghanian” found in him, by good luck; and they had promoted him to their hardest-worked and best-paid section,—the section on which, as it happened, was this Chamoguin run, and the long bend which I have described, by which the road “headed” that stream.

The younger Todhunter did meet his brother at Faber’s Mills, where the repair-train had hauled out of the way of the express, and where the express took wood. The brothers always looked for each other on such occasions; and Bill promised to examine the paper which Joslyn had carefully written out, and which his brother brought to him.

I have never repeated in detail the mass of calculations which Bill Todhunter made on the suggestion thus given to him. If I had, I would not repeat them here, for a reason which has been suggested already. He became fascinated with the problem presented to him. Stated in the language of the craft, it was this:

Given a moving body, with a velocity eight thousand eight hundred feet in a minute, what should be its elevation that it may fall eleven hundred feet in the transit of five-eighths of a mile?” He had not only to work up the parabola, comparatively simple, but he had to allow for the resistance of the air, on the supposition of a calm, according to the really admirable formulas of Robins and Coulomb, which were the best be had access to. Joslyn brought me, one day, a letter from Bill Todhunter, which shows how carefully he went into this intricate inquiry.

Unfortunately for them all, it took possession of this spirited and accomplished young man. You see, he not only had the mathematical ability for the calculation of the fatal curve, but, as had been ordered without any effort of his, he was in precisely the situation of the whole world for trying in practice his own great experiment. At each of the two X X of Joslyn’s map, the company had, as it happened, switches for repair-trains or wood-trains. Had it not, Bill Todhunter had ample power to make them.

For the “experiment,” all that was necessary was, that under the pretext of re-adjusting these switches, he should lay out that at the upper X so that it should run, on the exact grade which he required, to the western edge of the ravine, in a line which should be the direct continuation of the long, straight run with which the little map begins.

An engine, then, running down that grade at the immense rapidity practicable there, would take the switch with its full speed, would fly the ravine at precisely the proper slopes, and, if the switch had been rightly aligned, would land on the similar switch at the lower X. It would come down exactly right on the track, as you sit precisely on a chair when you know exactly how high it is.

“If.” And why should it not be rightly aligned, if Bill Todhunter himself aligned it? This he was well disposed to do. He also would align the lower switch, that at the lower X, that it might receive into its willing embrace the engine on its arrival.

When the bold engineer had conceived this plan, it was he who pushed the others on to it, not they who urged him. They were at work on their daily duty, sometimes did not meet each other for a day or two. Bill Todhunter did not see them more than once in a fortnight. But whenever they did meet, the thing seemed to be taken more and more for granted. At last Joslyn observed one day, as he ran down, that there was a large working-party at the switch above Drums, and he could see Bill Todhunter, in his broad sombrero, directing them all. Joslyn was not surprised, somehow, when he came to the lower switch, to find another working-party there. The next time they all three met, Bill Todhunter told them that all was ready if they were. He said that he had left a few birches to screen the line of the upper switch, for fear some nervous bungler, driving an engine down, might be frightened, and “blow” about the switch. But he said that any night when the others were ready to make the fly, he was; that there would be a full moon the next Wednesday, and, if there was no wind, he hoped they would do it then.

“You know,” said poor Joslyn, describing it to me, “I should never have done it alone; August would never have done it alone; no, I do not think that Bill Todhunter himself would have done it alone. But our heads were full of it. We had thought of it and thought of it till we did not think of much else; and here was everything ready, and neither of us was afraid, and neither of us chose to have the others think he was afraid. I did say, what was the truth, that I had never meant to try it with a train. I had only thought that we should apply to the supe, and that he would get up a little excursion party of gentlemen,—editors, you know, and stockholders,—who would like to do it together, and that I should have the pleasure and honor of taking them over. But Todhunter poohed at that. He said all the calculations were made for the inertia of a full train, that that was what the switch was graded for, and that everything would have to be altered if any part of the plan were altered. Besides, he said the superintendent would never agree, that he would insist on consulting the board and the chief engineer, and that they would fiddle over it till Christmas.

“`No,’ said Bill, `next Wednesday, or never! If you will not do it then, I will put the tracks back again.’ August Todhunter said nothing; but I knew he would do what we agreed to, and he did.

“So at last I said I would jump it on Wednesday night, if the night was fine. But I had just as lief own to you that I hoped it would not be fine. Todhunter— Bill Todhunter, I mean—was to leave the switch open after the freight had passed, and to drive up to the Widow Jones’s Cross Road. There he would have a lantern, and I would stop and take him up. He had a right to stop us, as chief of repairs. Then we should have seven miles down-grade to get up our speed, and then—we should see!

“Mr. Ingham, I might have spared myself the hoping for foul weather. It was the finest moonlight night that you ever knew in October. And if Bill Todhunter had weighed that train himself, he could not have been better pleased,—one baggage-car, one smoking-car, two regular first-class, and two palaces: she run just as steady as an old cow! We came to the Widow Jones’s, square on time; and there was Bill’s lantern waving. I slowed the train: he jumped on the tender without stopping it. I `up brakes’ again, and then I told Flanagan, my fireman, to go back to the baggage-car, and see if they would lend me some tobacco. You see, we wanted to talk, and we didn’t want him to see. `Mr. Todhunter and I will feed her till you come back,’ says I to Flanagan. In a minute after he had gone, August Todhunter came forward on the engine; and, I tell you, she did fly!

“`Not too fast,’ said Bill, `not too fast: too fast is as bad as too slow.’

“`Never you fear me,’ says I. `I guess I know this road and this engine. Take out your watch, and time the mile-posts,’ says I; and he timed them. `Thirty-eight seconds,’ says he; `thirty-seven and a half, thirty-six, thirty-six, thirty-six,’—three times thirty-six, as we passed the posts, just as regular as an old clock! And then we came right on the mile-post you know at Old Flander’s. `Thirty-six,’ says Bill again. And then she took the switch,—I can hear that switch-rod ring under us now Mr. Ingham,—and then—we were clear!

“Wasn’t it grand? The range was a little bit up, you see, at first; but it seemed as if we were flying just straight across. All the rattle of the rail stopped, you know, though the pistons worked just as true as ever; neither of us said one word, you know; and she just flew—well, as you see a hawk fly sometimes, when he pounces, you know, only she flew so straight and true! I think you may have dreamed of such things. I have; and now,—now I dream it very often. It was not half a minute, you know, but it seemed a good long time. I said nothing and they said nothing; only Bill just squeezed my hand. And just as I knew we must be half over,—for I could see by the star I was watching ahead that we were not going up, but were falling again,—do you think the rope by my side tightened quick, and the old bell on the engine gave one savage bang, turned right over as far as the catch would let it, and stuck where it turned! Just that one sound, everything else was still; and then she landed on the rails, perhaps seventy feet inside the ravine, took the rails as true and sweet as you ever saw a ship take the water, hardly touched them, you know, skimmed—well, as I have seen a swallow skim on the sea; the prettiest, well, the tenderest touch, Mr. Ingham, that ever I did see! And I could just hear the connecting rods tighten the least bit in the world behind me, and we went right on.

“We just looked at each other in the faces, and we could not speak; no, I do not believe we spoke for three quarters of a minute. Then August said, `Was not that grand? Will they let us do it always, Bill?’ But we could not talk then. Flanagan came back with the tobacco, and I had just the wit to ask him why he had been gone so long. Poor fellow! he was frightened enough when we pulled up at Clayville, and he thought it was Drums. Drums, you see, was way up the bend, a dozen miles above Clayville. Poor Flanagan thought we must have passed there while he was skylarking in the baggagecar, and that he had not minded it. We never stopped at Drums unless we had passengers, or they. It was what we call a flag-station. So I blew Flanagan up, and told him he was gone too long.

“Well, sir, at Clayville we did stop,—always stopped there for wood. August Todhunter, he was the palace conductor; he went back to look to his passengers. Bill stayed with me. But in a minute August came running back, and called me off the engine. He led me forward, where it was dark; but I could see, as we went, that something was to pay. The minute we were alone he says,—

“`John, we’ve lost the rear palace.’

“`Don’t fool me, August,’ says I.

“`No fooling, John,’ says he. `The shackle parted. The cord parted, and is flying loose behind now. If you want to see, come and count the cars. The “General Fremont” is here all right; but I tell you the “James Buchanan” is at the bottom of the Chamoguin Creek.’

“I walked back to the other end of the platform, as fast as I could go and not be minded. Todhunter was there before me, tying up the loose end of the bell-cord. There was a bit of the broken end of the shackle twisted in with the bolt. I pulled the bolt and threw the iron into the swamp far as I could fling her. Then I nodded to Todhunter and walked forward just as that old goose at Clayville had got his trousers on, so he could come out, and ask me if we were not ahead of time. I tell you, sir, I did not stop to talk with him. I just rang `All aboard!’ and started her again; and this time I run slow enough to save the time before we came down to Steuben. We were on time, all right, there.”

Here poor Joslyn stopped a while in his story; and I could see that he was so wrought up with excitement that I had better not interrupt, either with questions or with sympathy. He rallied in a minute or two, and said,—

“I thought—we all thought—that there would be a despatch somewhere waiting us. But no; all was as regular as the clock. One palace more or less,—what did they know, and what did they care? So daylight came. We could not say a word, you know, with Flanagan there; and we only stopped, you know, a minute or two every hour; and just then was when August Todhunter had to be with his passengers, you know. Was not I glad when we came into Pemaquid,—our road ran from Pemaquid across the mountains to Eden, you know,—when we came into Pemaquid, and nobody had asked any questions?

“I reported my time at the office of the master of trains, and I went home. I tell you, Mr. Ingham, I have never seen Pemaquid Station since that day.

“I had done nothing wrong, of course. I had obeyed every order, and minded every signal. But still I knew public opinion might be against me when they heard of the loss of the palace. I did not feel very well about it, and I wrote a note to say I was not well enough to take my train the next night; and I and Mrs. Joslyn went to New York, and I went aboard a Collins steamer as fireman; and Mrs. Joslyn, she went as stewardess; and I wrote to Pemaquid, and gave up my place. It was a good place, too; but I gave it up, and I left America.

Bill Todhunter, he resigned his place too, that same day, though that was a good place. He is in the Russian service now. He is running their line from Archangel to Astrachan; good pay, he says, but lonely. August would not stay in America after his brother left; and he is now captain’s clerk on the Harkaway steamers between Bangkok and Cochbang; good place he says, but hot. So we are all parted.

“And do you know, sir, never one of us ever heard of the lost palace!”

Sure enough, under that very curious system of responsibility, by which one corporation owns the carriages which another corporation uses, nobody in the world has to this moment ever missed “The Lost Palace.” On each connecting line, everybody knew that “she” was not there; but no one knew or asked where she was. The descent into the rocky bottom of the Chamouin, more than fifteen hundred feet below the line of flight, had of course been rapid,—slow at first, but in the end rapid. In the first second, the lost palace had fallen sixteen feet; in the second, sixty-four; in the third, one hundred and forty-four; in the fourth, two hundred and fifty-six; in the fifth, four hundred feet; so that it must have been near the end of the sixth second of its fall, that, with a velocity now of more than six hundred feet in a second, the falling palace, with its unconscious passengers, fell upon the rocks at the bottom of the Chamoguin ravine. In the dead of night, wholly without jar or parting, those passengers must have been sleeping soundly; and it is impossible, therefore, on any calculation of human probability, that any one of them can have been waked an instant before the complete destruction of the palace, by the sudden shock of its fall upon the bed of the stream. To them the accident, if it is fair to call it so, must have been wholly free from pain.

The tangles of that ravine, and the swamp below it, are such that I suppose that even the most adventurous huntsman never finds his way there. On the only occasion when I ever met Mr. Jules Verne he expressed a desire to descend there from one of his balloons, to learn whether the inhabitants of “The Lost Palace” might not still survive, and be living in a happy republican colony there,—a place without railroads, without telegrams, without mails, and certainly without palaces. But at the moment when these sheets go to press, no account of such an adventure has appeared from his rapid pen.

99 Linwood Street

A Christmas Story

A gray morning, the deck wet, the iron all beaded with frost, all the longshoremen in heavy pea-jackets or cardigans, the whole ship in a bustle, and the favored first-class passengers just leaving.

One sad-looking Irish girl stands with her knit hood already spotted with the rime, and you cannot tell whether those are tears which hang from her black eyelashes or whether the fog is beginning to freeze there. What you see is that the poor thing looks right and left and up the pier and down the pier, and that in the whole crowd—they all seem so selfish—she sees nobody. Hundreds of people going and coming, pushing and hauling, and Nora’s big brother is not there, as he promised to be and should be.

Mrs. Ohstrom, the motherly Swedish woman, who has four children and ten tin cups and a great bed and five trunks and a fatuous, feckless husband makes time, between cousins and uncles and custom-house men and sharpers, to run up every now and then to say that Nora must not cry, that she must be easy, that she has spoken to the master and the master has said they are three hours earlier than they were expected. And all this was so kindly meant and so kindly said that poor Nora brushed the tears away, if they were tears, and thanked her, though she did not understand one word that dear Mrs. Ohstrom said to her. What is language, or what are words, after all?

And the bright-buttoned, daintily dressed little ship’s doctor, whom poor Nora hardly knew in his shore finery,—he made time to stop and tell her that the ship was too early, and that she must not worry. Father, was it, she was waiting for? “Oh, brother! Oh, he will be sure to be here! Better sit down. Here is a chair. Don’t cry. I am afraid you had no breakfast. Take this orange. It will cheer you up. I shall see you again.”

Alas! the little doctor was swept away and forgot Nora for a week, and she “was left lamenting.”

For one hour went by, and two, and three. The Swedish woman went, and the doctor went, and the girl could see the captain go, and the mate that gave them their orders every morning. The custom-house people began to go. The cabs and other carriages for the gentry had gone long before.

And poor Nora was left lamenting.

Then was it that that queer Salvation Army girl, with a coal-scuttle for a bonnet, came up again. She had smiled pleasantly two or three times before, and had asked Nora to eat a bun. Poor Nora broke down and cried heartily this time. But the other was patient and kind, and said just what the others had said. Only she did not go away. And she had the sense to ask if Nora knew where the brother lived.

“Why, of course I do, miss. See, here is the paper.”

And the little soldier lass read it: “99 Linwood Street, Boston.”

“My poor child, what a pity you did not let us see it before!”

Alas and alas! Nora’s box was of the biggest. But the army lass flinched at nothing.

An immense wagon, with two giant horses, loaded with the most extraordinary chests which have been seen since the days of the Vikings. Piled on the top were many feather-beds, and on the top of the feather-beds a Scandinavian matron. With Mike, the good-natured teamster, who was at once captain and pilot of this craft, the army lass had easily made her treaty, when he was told the story. He was to carry Nora and her outfit to the Linwood Street house after he had taken these Swedes to theirs. “And indade it will not be farr, miss. There ‘s a shorrt cut behind Egan’s, if indade he did not put up a tinimint house since I was that way.” And with new explanations to Nora that all was right, that indeed it was better this way than it would have been had her brother been called from his work, she was lifted, without much consent of her own, to the driver’s seat, and her precious “box” was so placed that she could rest her little feet upon it.

Nora had proudly confided to the friendly lass the assurance that she had money, had even shown a crisp $2 bill which had been sent to her for exigencies.

But when the lass made the contract with Mike Dermott, the good fellow said he should take Nora and her box for the love of County Cork. “Indade, indade, I don’t take money from the like of her.”

And so they started, with the Swedish men walking on one side of the cart with their rifles, keeping a good lookout for buffaloes and red Indians and grizzly bears, as men landing in a new country which they were to civilize. More sailing for there was the ferry to cross to old Boston. Much waiting, for there was a broken-down coal-wagon in Salutation Alley. Long conference between Nora and Mike, in which he did all the talking and she all the listening, as to home rule and Mr. McCarthy, and what O’Brien thought of this, and what Cunniff thought of that. Then an occasional question came in Swedish from the matron above their heads, and was followed by a reply in Celtic English from Mike, each wholly ignorant of the views or wishes of the others. And occasionally the escort of riflemen, after some particular attack of chaff, in words which they fortunately did not understand, looked up to their matron, controller, and director, exchanged words with her, and then studied the pavement again for tracks of buffalo. A long hour of all this, the stone and brick of the city giving way to green trees between the houses as they come to Dorchester.

Poor Nora looks right and looks left, hoping to meet her big brother. She begins to think she shall remember him. Everybody else looks so different from Fermoy that he must look like home.

But there is no brother.

There is at last a joyful cry as the Swedish matron and the riflemen recognize familiar faces. And Mike smiles gladly, and brings round the stout bays with a twitch, so that the end of the cart comes square to the sidewalk. Somebody produces a step-ladder, and the Swedish matron, with her bird-cage in her hand, descends in triumph. Much kissing, much shaking of hands, much thanking of God, more or less reverent. Then the cords are cut, beds flung down, the giant boxes lifted, the sons of Anak only know how. The money covenanted for is produced and paid, and Mike mounts lightly to Nora’s side.

“And now, Nora, my child, wherr is the paper? For in two minutes we ‘ll soon be therr, now that this rubbish is landed.”

And he read on the precious paper, “John McLaughlin, 99 Linwood Street.”

Strange to say, the paper said just what it had said two hours before.

“And now, my dear child, we will be therr in ten minutes, if only we can cross back of Egan’s.”

And although they could not cross back of Egan’s, for Egan had put up a “tinimint” house since Mike had passed that way, yet in ten minutes Linwood Street had been found. No. 99 at last revealed itself, between Nos. 7 and 2,—a great six-story wooden tinder-box, with clothes-lines mysterious behind, open doors in front, long passages running through, three doors on each side of a passage, and the wondering heads of eleven women who belonged to five different races and spoke in six different languages appearing from their eleven windows, as Mike and Nora and the two bays all stopped at one and the same moment at the door.

Mike was already anxious about his time, for he was to be at the custom-house an hour away or more at eleven sharp. But he selected a certain Widow Flynn from the eleven white-capped women; he explained to her briefly that John McLaughlin was to be found; he told Nora for the thirty-seventh time that all was right and that she must not cry; he looked at his watch again, rather anxiously, mounted his box, and drove swiftly away.

He was the one thread which bound Nora to this world. And this thread broke before her eyes.

Mrs. Flynn affected to be cheerful. But she was not cheerful. Mrs. Flynn was a prominent person in her sodality. And well she knew that if any John McLaughlin in those parts were expecting any sister from home, she should know him and where he lived. Well she knew, also, that John McLaughlin, the mason, was born in Glasgow; that John McLaughlin, who is on the city work, had all his family around him, and, most distinct of all, she knew that no McLaughlin, sisterless or many-sistered, lived in this beehive which she lived in, though it were 99 Linwood Street. Into her own cell of that beehive, however, she took poor, sad, desolate Nora. Into the hallway she bade the loafing neighbor boys bring Nora’s trunk; in a language Nora could hardly understand she explained to her that all would be well as soon as the policeman passed by. She sent Mary Murphy, who happened to be at home from school, for a pint of milk, and so compelled Nora to drink a cup of tea and to eat a biscuit and a dropped egg, while they waited for the policeman.

Of course he knew of seven John McLaughlins. He even went to the drug-store and looked in the Boston Directory to find that there were there the names of sixty-one more. But not one of them lived in Linwood Street, as they all knew already. All the same Nora was charged not to cry, to drink more tea and eat more bread and butter. The “cop” said he would look in on three of the Johns whom he knew, and intelligent boys now returning from school were sent to the homes of the other four to interrogate them as to any expected sister. Within an hour, now nearly one o’clock, answers were received from all the seven. No one of them expected chick or child from Fermoy.

But the “cop” had a suggestion to make. His pocket list of names of streets revealed another Linwood Street—in Roxbury; not this one in Dorchester. Be it known to unlearned readers, who in snug shelter in Montana follow along this little tale, that Roxbury and Dorchester are both parts of that large municipality called Boston. Though no John McLaughlin was in the directory for 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, was not that the objective? Poor Nora was questioned as to Roxbury. She was sure she never heard of it.

But the clue was too good to be lost, and the authority of the friendly “cop” was too great to be resisted. He telephoned to the central office that Nora McLaughlin, just from Ireland, had been found, in a fashion, but that no one knew where to put her. Then he stopped a milkman from Braintree, who delivered afternoon milk for invalids.

Was he not going through Roxbury?

Of course he was.

Would he not take this lost child to 99 Linwood Street?

Of course he would. Milkmen, from their profession, have hearts warm toward children.

Well, if he were to take her, he had better take her trunk too.

To which illogical proposal the milkman acceded—on the afternoon route there is so much less milk to take than there is in the morning.

So Nora was lifted into the milk-wagon. In tears she kissed good Mrs. Flynn. The boys and girls assembled to bid her good-by, and even she had a hope for a few moments that her troubles were at an end.

At 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, they were preparing for the Review Club.

The Review Club met once a fortnight at half-past two o’clock at the house of one or another of the members. They first arranged the little details of the business. Then the hostess read, or made some one read, the scraps which seemed most worthy in the reviews and magazines of the last issues, and at four the husbands and brothers and neighbors generally dropped in, and there was afternoon tea.

“You are sure you have cream enough, Ellen?”

“Oh, yes, mum.”

“Indeed yes, mum.”

“And let me know just before you bring up the hot water.” Doorbell rings. “There is Mrs. Walter now!”

No, it wasn’t Mrs. Walter. She came three minutes after. But before she came, Howells, the milkman, had lifted Nora from her seat. As the snow fell fast on the doorsteps, he carried her carefully up to the door, and even by the time Ellen answered the bell he had the heavy chest, dragging it over the snow by the stout rope at one end.

Ellen was amazed to find this group instead of Mrs. Walter. She called her mistress, who heard Howells’s realistic story with amazement, not to say amusement.

“You poor dear child!” she cried at once. “Come in where it is dry! John McLaughlin? No, indeed! Who can John McLaughlin be? Ellen, what is Mike’s last name?”

Mike was the choreman, who made the furnace fire and kept the sidewalk.

“Mike’s name, mum? I don’t know, mum. Mary will know, mum.”

And for the moment Ellen disappeared to find Mary.

“Never mind, never mind. Come in, you poor child. You are very good to bring her, Mr. Howells, very good indeed. We will take care of her. Is it going to storm?”

Mr. Howells thought it was going to storm, and turned to go away. At that moment Mrs. Walter arrived, the first comer of the Review Club. And Nora’s new hostess had to turn to her guests, while Ellen in the last cares for the afternoon table had to comfort Nora by spasms. It was left for Margaret the chambermaid to pump out—or to screw out, as you choose—the details of the story from the poor frightened waif, who seemed more astray than ever.

For in spite of the gathering snow and the prospect of more, the members of the Review Club had followed fast on Mrs. Walters and gathered in full force.

The hostess, though somewhat preoccupied, was courteous and ready.

Only the functions of the club, as they went forward, would be occasionally interrupted. Thus she would read aloud “as in her private duty bound”—

“Mrs. Goodspeed, would you mind reading on? Here is the place. I see my postman pass the window.”

And so, moving quickly to the front door, she interviewed the faithful Harrington, dressed, heaven knows why, in Confederate uniform of gray. For Harrington had served his four years on the loyal side. Four times a day did Harrington with his letter-bag renew the connection of this household with the world and other worlds.

“Dear Mr. Harrington, I thought you could tell us. Here is a girl named Nora McLaughlin, and here is her trunk, both left at the door by the milkman, and we do not know anything about where she belongs.”

“Insufficient address?” asked Harrington, professionally.

“Exactly. All she knows is that her brother is named John.”

“A great many of them are,” said Harrington, already writing on his memorandum book, and in his memory fixing the fact that a large, two-legged living parcel, insufficiently addressed, had been left at the wrong door for John McLaughlin; also a trunk, too large for delivery by the penny post.

“I will tell the other men, and if I was you I would send to the police.”

But Bulgaria was ended, and Mrs. Conover handed her an article on “Antarctic Discovery.” She was again reading:—

“Under these circumstances Captain Wilkes, who had collected a boatload of stones from the front of the glacier,” when she gave back the “Forum” to Mrs. Conover. “Would you mind going on just a minute? “ she said, and ran out to meet the icecream man. So soon as he had left his tins she said,—

Good Mr. Fridge was most eager to help, and the hostess returned, took the book again and read on with “the temperature, as they observed it, was 99 degrees C.; but, as the alcohol in their tins was frozen at the moment, there seemed reason to suspect the correctness of this observation.”

And a shiver passed over the Review Club.

Thus far the powers of confusion and error seemed to have been triumphant over poor Nora, or such was the success of that power who uses these agencies, if the reader prefer to personify him.

But the time had come to turn his left flank and to attack his forces in the rear, for the postman now took the field,—that is to say, Harrington, good fellow, finished his third delivery, four good miles and ninetenths of a furlong, snow two inches deep, three, four, six, before he was done, and then returned to his branch office to report.

“Two-legged parcel; insufficient address; 99 Linwood Street! Jim, what ever come to that letter that went to 99 Linwood Street with insufficient address six weeks ago?”

“Linwood Street? Insufficient address? Foreign letter? Why, of course, you know, went back to the central office.”

“I guess it did,” said Harrington, grimly; “so I must go there too.”

This meant that after Harrington had gone his rounds again on delivery route No. 6, four more miles and ninetenths more of a furlong, 313 doorbells and only 73 slit boxes, snow now ranging from 6 inches to 12 on the sidewalks, and breast-deep where there was a chance for drifting, when all this was well done, so that Harrington had no more duties to Uncle Sam, he could take Nora McLaughlin’s work in hand, and thus defeat the prince of evil.

To the central office by a horse-car. Blocked once or twice, but well at the office at 7.30 in the evening.

Christmas work heavy, so the whole home staff is on duty. That is well. Enemy of souls loses one point there.

Blind-letter clerks all here. Insufficient-delivery men both here. Chief of returned bureau here. All summoned to the foreign office as Harrington tells his story. Indexes produced, ledgers, journals, day-books, and private passbooks. John McLaughlin’s biography followed out on 67 of the different avatars in which his personality has been manifested under that name. False trail here—clue breaks there—scent fails here, but at last—a joyful cry from Will Search:—

“Here you are! Insufficient address. November 1. Queenstown letter—`Linwood, to John McLaughlin. Try Dorchester. Try Roxbury. Try East Boston. Try Somerville’—and there it stops, and was not returned.”

“Try Somerville!”

In these words great light fell over the eager circle. Not because Somerville is the seat of an insane hospital. No! But because it is not in the Boston Directory.

If you please, Somerville is an independent city, and so, unless John McLaughlin worked in Boston, if he lived in Somerville, he would not be in the Boston Directory.

Not much! Somerville has its own seven John McLaughlins besides those Boston ones.

“I say, Harry, Tom, Dick—somebody fetch Somerville Directory!”

Dick flew and returned with the book.

“Here you be! `John McLaughlin, laborer, 99 Linwood Street!

“Victory!”

Satan’s forces tremble, and as the different officers return to their desks “even the ranks of Tuscany” in that well-bred office “can scarce forbear to cheer.”

As for Harrington, he bids good-by, wraps his tartan around him, and is out in the snow again. Where Linwood Street is he “knows no more than the dead.” But somebody will know.

“Take your second left, cross three or four streets, turn to the right by the water-pipe, take the third right, go down hill by the schoolhouse and take second left, and you come out at 11 Linwood Street.”

All which Harrington does. He experiences one continual burst of joy that his route does not take him through these detours daily. But his professional experience is good for him. We have no need to describe his false turns. Even aniseed would have been useless in that snow. At last, just as the Somerville bells ring for nine o’clock, Harrington also rings triumphant at the door of the little five-roomed cottage, where his lantern has already revealed the magic number 99.

Ring! as for a gilt-edged special delivery! Door thrown open by a solid man with curly red hair, unshaven since Sunday, in his shirtsleeves and with kerosene lamp in his hand.

“Are you John McLaughlin?”

“Indade I am; the same.”

“And where’s your sister Nora?”

The good fellow, who had been stern before, broke down. “And indade I was saying to Ellen it’s an awful night for ’em all in the gale off the coast in the ship. The holy Virgin and the good God take care of ’em!”

And a broad grin lighted his face as he spoke the words.

There was joy in every bed and at every door of the five rooms. Then John hastily donned coat, cardigan, and ulster. He persuaded Harrington to drink a cup of redhot tea which was brewing on the stove. While the good fellow did so, and ate a St. Anne’s bun, which Mrs. McLaughlin produced in triumph, John was persuading Hermann Gross, the expressman next door, to put the gray into a light pung he had for special delivery. By the time Harrington went to the door two lanterns were flitting about in the snow-piled yard behind the two houses.

Harrington assisted in yoking the gray. In five minutes he and John were defying the gale as they sped across the silent bridge, bound south to Roxbury. Poor little Nora was asleep in the parlor on the sofa. She had begged and begged that she need not be put to bed, and by her side her protector sat reading about the antarctic. But of a sudden Harrington reappeared.

Is it Santa Claus?

Indeed it is! Beard, hat, coat, all white with snow!

And Santa Claus has come for the best present he will deliver that evening!

Dear little Nora is wrapped in sealskins and other skins, mauds and astrakhan rugs. She has a hot brick at her feet, and Pompey, the dog, is made to lie over them, so John McLaughlin No. 68 takes her in triumph to 99 Linwood Street.

That was a Christmas to be remembered! And Christmas morning, after church, the Brothers of St. Patrick, which was the men’s society, and the Sodality of St. Anne’s, which was the women’s, determined on a great Twelfthnight feast to celebrate Nora’s return.

It was to show “how these brethren love one another.”

They proposed to take the rink. People didn’t use it for skating in winter as much as in summer.

Nora was to receive, with John McLaughlin and his wife to assist. The other 74 John McLaughlins were to act as ushers.

The Salvation Army came first, led by the lass who found Michael.

Procession No. 2 was Mike and the teamsters who “don’t take nothing for such as she.”

Fourth, all the patrolmen who had helped and all who tried to help, led by “cop” No. 47.

Fifth, all the school children who had told the story and had made inquiries.

Sixth, the man who made the Somerville Directory.

Seventh and last, in two barouches, Harrington and the chiefs of staff at the general post-office. And the boys asked Father McElroy to make a speech to all just before the dancing began.

And he said: “The lost sheep was never lost. She thought she was lost in the wilderness, but she was at home, for she was met by the Christmas greeting of the world into which the dear Lord was born!”

NOTE.—It may interest the reader to know that the important part of this story is true.