by flirting with her for a long time, and got something by her friends’ influence, he threw her over, and it was said that she tried to poison him, but I don’t believe that. She married an old attorney afterwards. I have forgotten his name.”
“Then the ex-writing master has been dramatising Lipthwaite, in short. I wonder none of the Miss Vernons came into the drama.”
“Perhaps that suffering angel, brought in for contrast, Eugenia, is meant for one of us,” said Mrs. Hawkesley.
“Yourself, perhaps,” said her husband, laughing. “No, Betty, dear, I do not think you are exactly adapted for the rôle of a Suffering Angel.”
LIFE AT CHARLESTON.
IN QUIET TIMES.
We hear so much just now of South Carolina, and of the proceedings of the people of Charleston, and the issue of the present excitement there must be so important, that persons who have never been there may like to know what is the aspect of the city, and what are the ways of the people of Charleston. I will therefore note down a few particulars, as they appear to a resident of a different part of the country. As a fellow-citizen under the general government of the United States, I am qualified to enter into their minds in a general way, while the broad differences in climate and its consequences between New England and a Southern State, may enable me to note and report peculiarities of manners and customs as a foreigner would do. Let my readers, then, think of me as a merchant from Massachusetts, visiting his sisters in their southern homes, first, during an ordinary period of repose; and again, at a time when public affairs were supposed to look threatening. This last condition is a not uncommon one. Since the marriages of my sisters, I have three times been called to them, to see what could be done with them and the children, in case of political or social convulsion.
Once I went by sea, for air and coolness. Approaching the city in that way I saw a long stretch of the coast: and I must say I thought it a very dreary one. The even line of forest on the low sandy shore; the shoals; the wide flats at low-water; and the sameness of level within the whole horizon, make up a scene of monotony such as I had not anticipated seeing anywhere on our side the Gulf. When we came within sight of Charleston the dreariness did not go off. The city occupies the point between the two rivers Ashley and Cooper, spreading (as I afterwards saw from a church steeple) like a fan from the apex of the sandy promontory which it occupies. On either hand of our channel lay the islands, which produce some of the best cotton in the world. A few groups of dwellings appeared in front of the pinewoods on the main land. A few masts bristled on the water off the wharves of the city; and a vessel was on the bar, coming out as we went in. On our right was Fort Moultrie on its island; and on the left, Fort Sumter, apparently growing out of the sea at high water. The most lively element in the scene was perhaps the black buzzards which are always moving about the harbour. They are as safe there as the doves in St. Mark’s Place at Venice; they are the unpaid scavengers of the city, and are not to be meddled with. It is an odd sight at low water, to see a long row of these ugly birds perched on the line of stakes left uncovered by the ebb. There is nothing to be said for the beauty of the view from the shore at such an hour; and at high water, the sea is scarcely visible. It is a distant grey line, seen through either the reek of the slime of the harbour, or the haze of that sultry climate. I am always glad to turn my back upon the sea at Charleston, and shall always reach the place by land if indeed I ever go there again.
We New Englanders are supposed by Old Englanders to know something about woods; but I doubt whether the railway cutting in South Carolina is less striking to us than to European travellers. It is a sensation worth knowing to stand on the piazza, in front of one of the sheds which serve for stations, and look at the railway one is about to embark on. There is nothing whatever to be seen but the track and the sky. The track is walled in by two lines of dark trees, cut as clean as if they had been sliced at one stroke. Between them the rails run in perspective till all four unite in one, which is itself lost just before the apparent meeting of the two lines of forest. It is impossible to conjecture how many miles away it is. At length some means of judging arise. The station-master’s practised ear catches the tokens of a coming train. After a few minutes his eye discerns what the stranger cannot see; but a moving object is at length visible to all,—a point of a somewhat different hue from all else. For several more minutes it seems doubtful whether it enlarges; and one again and again supposes it has halted. It has approached, however, steadily at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour. Before it comes up, exactly the same process is going on, on the precisely similar road on the other hand, on which the train I am expecting is travelling towards us.
Once off, there is an alternation between the two ordinary objects,—the forest and the swamp. Both have great charms to my eye. The tall pines rise sometimes clear of branches to the very canopy, and sometimes screened with climbing plants, hanging out blossoms, red, yellow, and white. The grey moss of the tysandria floats from every bough and stem. The young aloes spring under the shelter of fallen trunks, and quick little lizards run along the prostrate stems. The silvery sand, scarcely tinged by wiry grass, spreads its soft surface as far as one can see under the trees; and the springs of water which ooze out from the roots of some old tree, run clear as crystal in sun or shade. In the swamp we see to some depth, as the rails rest on piles and trestles, above the water. We can see water-snakes in the intervals of the flowering reeds and flags, waving in any casual current. I prefer passing these swamps in the day; for by night the frogs are too noisy for endurance. It is all a chance, however, what hour you pass any given spot. Time is of no value in these regions. Punctuality is not dreamed of, and no guest is expected till he appears. One may reach Charleston at any hour of the day or