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She stored in the attic the several fine engravings in gilt frames that her father and mother had brought with them from New England. In their place she hung passepartouted Gibson pictures clipped from magazines. And she gave up reading tales of travel and adventure, gave up Dickens and Thackeray and Mark Twain and took to E. P. Roe and other writers of a sticky and lovelorn nature.
"'Decide then thyself. sternly proceeded the Inquisitor, 'which of ye twain was right: Thou who didst reject, or he who offered? Remember the subtle meaning of question the first, which runs thus: Wouldst Thou go into the world empty-handed?
Mark Twain came down to the footlights long after Artemus Ward had passed from the scene; but as an American humorist with whom during half a century I was closely intimate and round whom many of my London experiences revolve, it may be apropos to speak of him next after his elder. There was not lacking a certain likeness between them.
"Sit down, my friend," said the elder of the twain, a man of rough dress and hard hands, but good, straightforward aspect, and that careless humor which generally comes from a life of adventures, and a long acquaintance with the world's caprice. "I have brought you here that we may be undisturbed. Little pitchers have long ears.
Rubens is now only a 'healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased animal. But the fault lies as much at the door of the time, as at that of the man. The Reformation had come and gone. The reformers had cast out the errors, and rent in twain the fallacies of the Roman Catholic Church. Then came a standing still; a paralysis of religion.
Then the fair beams of the moon became obscured, and the twain reddened with the reflection of the fire, and the billows waxed like riotous flames; and presently the shell rose upon the peak of many waves swollen to one, and looking below, they saw in the scarlet abyss of waters at their feet a monstrous fish, with open jaws and one baleful eye; and the fish was lengthy as a caravan winding through the desert, and covered with fiery scales.
The trembling, agitated hand that a moment before shook with the strong emotion of a parent's anxious fears, became suddenly firm and steady; his swimming eyes resumed their keen, clear sight, and his mind recovered its wonted energy of purpose at the proper moment. Lalotte's young voice was the first to proclaim, aloud, "The arrow hath cleft the apple in twain! and the child is safe."
He answered, "O my sister, they are well and glad and in good case, lacking naught save a sight of thy face." Then she set somewhat of food before him and he ate, after which talk ensued between the twain and they spake of King Badr Basim and his beauty and loveliness, his symmetry and skill in cavalarice and cleverness and good breeding. Quoth Julnar, "Name them to me for I know them all."
And uttering my voice I spake to her winged words: "'Mother mine, wherefore dost thou not tarry for me who am eager to seize thee, that even in Hades we twain may cast our arms each about the other, and satisfy us with chill lament? Is it but a phantom that the high goddess Persephone hath sent me, to the end that I may groan for more exceeding sorrow?
If I'd known her better, I should have exclaimed, "You dear!" and I think it possible that I did say something to that effect, perhaps "You dear woman!" At all events, the veil of self-consciousness was rent in twain at that remark, and our spirits rushed together at this touch of London nature thus unexpectedly revealed. London!
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