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Show A BARTEREDLIFE. a state chariot. But I shall have my INTERNATIONAL PRESS ASSOCIATION except at the only dinner party they had given. Then the handsome Mrs. sat-t- o Withers appeared in pearl-colorin and diamonds as the mistress of emonies to a dozen substantial citizens and their expensively attired wives, dured the two hours spent at table, and the two duller ones in the great par-h- er lors, where the small company seemed lost and everybody talked as if afraid of his own voice. She was no gayer than the rest by the time the entertainment was half over. The atmosphere of spectable stupidity was infectious, and this pervaded every nook of her new home. In her brothers house she had had young visitors, and there was, at the dullest, the hope of release to con-i- n sole her. Now she was settled in life, could sit down with idle hands and spend her days in contemplation of her grandeur. She had married well. body looked askance at her when old dieted a third remarkable courtesy maids were the subjects of pity or ridicule. The most censorious could not upon the novice, and vanished. She is underbred and a meddler, couple her name with the dread word She had no household decided Constance, while she made a dependence. ie cares. in be and Miss Field addressed Mr. to I hate Withers toilet. rapid third person. I thought it a form lieved her of all such. And the mistress of the mansion waa of speech confined, in this country, to kitchen maids and dry goods store left to her own devices? By no means. If her husband were fastidious, he was clerks. Before she could invest herself in the also tyrannical. He dictated not only dinner dress that lay uppermost in her , what dress his wife should appear in trunk the bell rang to summon her to daily, but also what laces and orna-th- e evening meal, and three mimites ments she should sport; at what hours thereafter the footman knocked at her she should "take the air; whom she door with the message that Mr. With- must visit and whom Invite; what ers had sent for her. songs she should sing to him when he . I shall be down directly. Tell him asked for music in the evening, and vnot to wait for me, she said, hurried- when the day should close the day so ly. She did not expect to be taken at wearisome in its similitude to all that her word, but upon her descent to the had preceded and those which should dining room she beheld her husband follow it. My cousin is a man with aspirations seated at the foot of the board and Miss Field at the head. The latter laid down above the frivolities of fashionable the soup ladle and jumped up, fussily, life, and excitement is injurious to his health, Miss Field notified the bride g. I that day after her fear Mrs. Withers will tire of the even tenor of our way. I like quiet, Constance replied. But she did not mean stagnation. She was married in April, and on the first of July the trio removed to Mr. Withers country seat. Here Constance was to find that the dead level of her existence had yet a lower plane of dullness. There was not a neighbor within four miles, hardly a farm house in sight. We recruit here after the dissipation of the winter, Miss Field said, The solitude is enrapturenjoyingly. ing. One can sleep all day long if she likes. This proved to be her favorite methCHAPTER ITT (Coxtihceixi Perhaps it would be better for me not to change my dress, if I am likely Infringe upon the dinner hour, said at her chamber door. Oh, I do not think my cousin would of that! exclaimed her em phatlc conductress. Then she amended Of course, Mrs. inadvertence. Withers is the proper judge of her own actions, and I would not appear to die- tate, but my cousin is punctilious on some points, and the matter of ladies is one of these. I have known him so long that I am conversant with all his amiable peculiarities. I am con- fldent he would be pleased to see Mrs. Withers assume the head of her table full dinner toilet. But as I remarked, I do not presume to dictate, to ad-- 1 vise, or even suggest. Mrs. Withers is undisputed empress here. Having run through this speech, she in- - ed j re-att- ' ' J ; re-y- frolic all the same. Another and a higher peak tempted her when she had cat for awhile upon a boulder crowning the first, revelling In the view of valley and hill, including the basin in which nestled the house, and the plain opening eastward toward the sea and civilization. The second height was precipitous, in some places almost perpendicular. From treading fearlessly and rapidly from crag to crag, she came to pulling herself up gravelly banks by catching at the stout underbrush, and steadying herself among rolling stones by tufts of wiry grass. But she kept on, and forgot aching feet, scant breath and blistered hands when she stood finally upon a broad plateau hundreds of feet above the house, that had dwindled into a toy cottage, and the environing plantations of trees like patches in an herb garden. This is life! she cried out in a sudden transport, and she sat her down upon a cushion of gray moss in the shadow of a cedar, to gaze and wonder and rejoice. She made a discovery presently. A spring, clear and impetuous, burst from between two overhanging rocks, and chose the shortest route to the valley, babbling with all its little might. It was joined, before it had gone many feet, by other rivulets, and from a point midway in the descent, where the cliffs were steepest, came up the shout of a waterfall. This, and the tireless murmur of the evergreens, made up the music of this upper sanctuary, until Constances voice rose from the rocky table, sweet, full, exultant: The wild streams leap with headlong sweep In their curbless course oer the moun- tain steep; All fresh and strong they foam along, Waking the rocks with their cataract song. My eye bears a glance like the beam on a lance As I watch the waters dash and dance. I burn with glee, for I love to see The path of anything thats free, I loye I love oh, I love the free! I love I love I love the free! 9 ta Vr hi (SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE! Lisbon is a city all up and down hill. The seven hills of Rome are nothing to it; it seems to be built on about fifty, and to facilitate matters there are numbers of small cars continually ascending and descending from one level to another apparently always full. There is also a vast system of open electric street s ears for the level places, called Americanos, built in Philadelphia. The chief open space is the Praco do Commercio, a large and handsome square, which is surrounded by public buildiDgs. The harbor is one of the finest in the world, and the quays extend between two and three miles along the bank of the river. The town itself is a place of remote antiquity. Its earliest name was Olisipo, by which it was known when it was the capital of the Lusitanians. It has been neld since then, in turn, by the Romans, the Goths, and the Moors, but in 1147 Alphonso I. of Portugal wrested it from the infidel. The city suffered from a severe earthquake in 1344, and was visited by a plague in 1348; the greatest disaster, however, befell it Nov. 1, 1755, when in less than ten minutes the greater part of the city was made a heap of mins,, from 30,000 to 40,000 persons were killed, and damage was done to the amount of nearly twenty millions sterling by one of the greatest earthquake convulsions on record. There are several other rather queer things in Portugal, but the beds are the queerest A wooden floor sometimes seems to yield, the human form adapts itself, fits in as it were, more or less to the inequalities of a rock surface; but these beds are adamantine and when you wake up you feel as if you had passed the night on a gridiron. The meals also are cog-whe- side the tops of these cones tow r up like factory chimneys, and are visible far and wide. Batalha and Thomar, and perhaps two or three other places in Portugal, would well deserve a visit, but we had not time for these. But before we leave the country I must not forget one more thing which is almost car-ro- queerer than the beds that is the money. Many amusing tales are told of the consternation of foreigners when their bills are presented to them and they think that they are ruined. Indeed, it is rather appalling after a stay of a few days, to find that you are indebted for tens of thousands. But it is for thousands of reis, the smallest ciurrent coin- - in Europe, and the sums, after all, amount to but a very reasonable number of francs. It is somewhat fatiguing business home-bringin- od of recuperating her exhausted ener- gies. Mr. Withers, too, liked a postprandial siesta, prescribed by his physician as eminently conducive to digestion. Constance was not more lonely when they slept than when they were awake. The horrible sterility of her life was not to be ameliorated by their society. If commonplaceness be a crime, Mr. Withers and his cousin were offenders of an aggravated type. Harriets affectations and Elnathan's platitudes were to the tortured senses of the third person of the party less endurable than the cicadas shrill monotone through the hot summer day, and the katydids endless refrain at night. Her chains, which had hitherto paralyzed her by their weight, began to gall and fret into her spirit. She grew unequal in temper, nervous and restless, under the restrictions imposed by her spouse. An insane impulse beset her to defy his authority and set at naught his counsels; to rush into some outrageous freak that should shock him out of his propriety and provoke the prudish toad eater to natural speech and action. This madness was never stronger than on one August afternoon when she escaped from the house, leaving the cousins to the enjoyment of their recuperative naps in their respective chambers, and took her way to the mountain back of the villa. She had never explored it, tempting as was the shade of the hemlocks and pines that grew up to the summit, and the walls of gray rock revealed through the rifts of the foliage. A current of fragrance, the odor of the resinous woods, an- - down to greet her ere she reached the swered by her ster- - outskirts of the forest, and the lulling eotyped, languid murmur of the wind in the evergreen smile, wondering boughs was like the sound of many only at the coirpla- - and wooing waters. The tender green ceney wi h which a tassels of the larches tapped her head man of hr r spouses as she bowed beneath their low branch-yeaand shrewd- - es, and the wide hemlocks were spread ness hearkened to in benediction above her. She was the bold flattery of alone with nature free for one short hour to think her own thoughts and his rarasile. exhibition act out her desires. She laughed as a The ceased to astonish her before she had ' bushy cedar knocked off her hat at the lived in the same house with, the cous- - instant that she tore her dress upon a . (BA for a month. Within the same pe- -t bramble. ' reduced to the riod she was gradually They are leagued with my commendable business the in a in the of proprietor management cipher position I pf thi establishment. Afier fht first of repressing the lawless vagaries of te abdithose who cannot get their fill of to not had Field Miss $Mf the seat at the head of the taM, ural beauties through the windows of flowed-ONSTAC- j rs J lal j The skylark springs with dew on his wings. And up in the arch of heaven he sings Oh, sweeter far Than the notes that come through a golden bar. The thrall and the state of the palace Tra-la-tra-l- a! gate Are what my spirit has learned to hate, The strain ceased abruptly, and, in place of the rapt musician, borne above the power of earthly woes to crush and petty vexations to sting, a woman grovelled upon the mossy cushion, weeping hot, fast tears, and beating against the rough rock with a childs folly of desperation the white hand that wore the badge of her servitude. What was she but a caged bird, hidden to preen its feathers and warble the notes its master dictated between golden bars? A slave to whom state and thrall meant one and the same abhorrent thing? What had she to do henceforward with dreams of beauty and freedom she, who had signed away her liberty of spirit and person, voluntarily accepting in their stead the most foul captivity a pure and upright woman can know? She felt herself to be utterly vile d in soul and flesh In the lonely sublimity of this mountain temple a leper, condemned and incurable, constrained to cry out at the approach of every passer-by- , "Unclean! unclean! It would have been better for her to beg her bread upon the doorsteps of the wealthy, and, failing that, to die by the wayside with starvation and cold, than to live the life of nominal respectability and abundance, of real degradation and poverty, which were now hers. The tears were dried, but she still sat on the gray carpet, clutching angrily at it and the wild flowers peeping through the crevices of the rock, rending them as passion had torn her; her bosom heaving with the unspent waves of excitement and a mutinous pout upon her lips, when a crackling among the brushwood thrilled her with an uncomfortable sensation of alarm. Before she could regain her feet or concert her scheme of defense or flight, the nearest cedar boughs were pushed aside, and a man stepped into the area fenced in by the hardy mountain evergreens. With subsiding fears, as her quick eye inventoried the various particulars of his neat traveling suit, gentlemanly bearing, pleasant countenance and deferential aspect toward herself, Constance arose, visibly embarrassed, but dignified, and awaited his pleasure. The stranger betrayed neither surprise nor confusion- - Walking directly up to her, he removed his hat, bowing low, with a bright, cordial smile. Unless I am greatly mistaken I have the pleasure of seeing my brothers wife. And you are more familiar with my name, and my handwriting than with my face. I am Edward Wlth-rs!- " plague-spotte- nat-M- ' (TO BB COXTIXtJSD.) The Avneida Da Liberdale. As in some peculiar.. parts of Spain, I to get back from Lisbon to Madrid, you are supposed to have but two especially if your ticket obliges you heavy ones, and nothing to begin the to go by way of Badajoz, where you Here it is the almoco, arrive at 7 oclock in the morning day upon. breakfast, from 9 to 12 oclock, and and have to wait until the middle of jantar, dinner, at evening. What an the afternoon. There is nothing to uncouth and Arabic sound these see here, but the town is historically names have! At both they serve in- interesting, having, sustained several numerable courses, but at the first no sieges and passed into the possession dessert or fruit appears only a large of one country after another, until cup of black coffee, and just before It was finally taken by the French this, as the last item on the bill of and given back to the Spaniards by fare, the waiter comes and asks you the Duke of Wellington in 1812, while if you will have eggs boiled or fried. Napoleon was away in Russia. Up Cintra is the place in Portugal. It to this time we had had delightful is a beautiful spot, a favorite summer summer weather, but it began to be resort for Lisbon and other Portu- cold in Madrid, and at the Escurial guese people, and even somewhat fre- we were plunged into winter again. quented by the English. Here the The Escurial is the only scrougey Queen Mother, Dona Maria Pia, has place in Spain, but here they lay a her summer residence. It is a quaint trap for you into which you can old palace, bearing in parts traces of hardly help falling. The two hotels its original Moorish architecture, and send omnibuses to Ihe station, each provided with a guide, whom you can scarcely avoid employing, although he is quite superflous. for tickets to all parts of the Escurial are distributed gratis and each division is presided over by its own custodian. Then, having you at their mercy, they can ask you what price they please for meals, and altogether the visit to the Escu- rial is attended with some vexation of spirit. The palace itself is, as it had remained in our recollection, dull and gloomy, and even the Pantheon of the Kings, where all the rules of Spain are burled in black sarcophagi, one above another, 'was not particularly impressive. The Pantheon of the Infantas, however, is interesting and rather beautiful. It Is a series of white halls filled with snowy sarcophagi, numbers of them occupied, but many awaiting their future tenants. One wonders whether sovereigns enough will ever sit on the Of Modern Build, throne ot Spain to furnish . infantas in others decorated in extravagant for all these marble coffins. Don John Emanuel style. There are, and need of Austria lies alone, as If in state, to he, no fireplaces, in the palace, and admirably chosen mottoes and but the celling of tie attractive and verses from the Scriptures, engraved enormous kitchen forms two gigantic upon the sarcophagi, lend an added cones, with great openings for the dignity to these resting places of the fumes and smoke to escape, and out- - sons and daughters of kings. -- , |