Alexander Hewatt - "An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2"

Margaret Sidney - "The Adventures of Joel Pepper"

Mary Grant Bruce (1878 1958). - "Mates at Billabong"

Paul Leicester Ford - "Janice Meredith"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Love Me Little, Love Me Long

C >> Charles Reade >> Love Me Little, Love Me Long




"What arrogance!"

"Don't you be angry; I'll love you and bless you all the same. But I
am a man, and a man I'll die, whether I die captain of a ship or of a
foretop. Poor Eve!"

"See how power tries people, and brings out their true character.
Since you commanded the _Rajah_ you are all changed. You used to
be submissive; now you must have your own way entirely. You will fling
my poor ship in my face unless I give you--but this is really using
force--yes, Mr. Dodd, this is using force. Somebody has told you that
my sex yield when downright compulsion is used. It is true; and the
more ungenerous to apply it;" and she melted into a few placid tears.

David did not know this sign of yielding in a woman, and he groaned at
the sight and hung his head.

"Advise me what I had better do."

To this singular proposal, David, listening to the ill advice of the
fiend Generosity, groaned out, "Why should you be tormented and made
cry?"

"Why indeed?"

"Nothing can change me; I advise you to cut it short."

"Oh, do you? very well. Why did you say 'poor Eve'?"

"Ah, poor thing! she cried for joy when she read your letter, but when
I go back she will cry for grief;" and his voice faltered.

"I will cut this short, Mr. Dodd; give me that paper."

"Which?"

"The wicked one, where you refuse my _Rajah_."

David hesitated.

"You are no gentleman, sir, if you refuse a lady. Give it me this
instant," cried Lucy, so haughtily and imperiously that David did not
know her, and gave her the letter with a half-cowed air.

She took it, and with both her supple white hands tore it with
insulting precision exactly in half. "There, sir and there, sir"
(exactly in four); "and there" (in eight, with malicious. exactness);
"and there"; and, though it seemed impossible to effect another
separation, yet the taper fingers and a resolute will reduced it to
tiny bits. She then made a gesture to throw them in the fire, but
thought better of it and held them.

David looked on, almost amused at this zealous demolition of a thing
he could so easily replace. He said, part sadly, part doggedly, part
apologetically, "I can write another."

"But you will not. Oh, Mr. Dodd, don't you see?!"

He looked up at her eagerly. To his surprise, her haughty eagle look
had gone, and she seemed a pitying goddess, all tenderness and
benignity; only her mantling, burning cheek showed her to be woman.

She faltered, in answer to his wild, eager look. "Was I ever so rude
before? What right have I to tear your letter unless I--"

The characteristic full stop, and, above all, the heaving bosom, the
melting eye, and the red cheek, were enough even for poor simple
David. Heaven seemed to open on him. His burning kisses fell on the
sweet hands that had torn his death-warrant. No resistance. She
blushed higher, but smiled. His powerful arm curled round her. She
looked a little scared, but not much. He kissed her sweet cheek: the
blush spread to her very forehead at that, but no resistance. As the
winged and rapid bird, if her feathers be but touched with a speck of
bird-lime, loses all power of flight, so it seemed as if that one
kiss, the first a stranger had ever pressed on Lucy's virgin cheek,
paralyzed her eel-like and evasive powers; under it her whole supple
frame seemed to yield as David drew her closer and closer to him, till
she hid her forehead and wet eyelashes on his shoulder, and murmured:

"How could I let _you_ be unhappy?!"

Neither spoke for a while. Each felt the other's heart beat; and David
drank that ecstasy of silent, delirious bliss which comes to great
hearts once in a life.

Had he not earned it?



CHAPTER XXIX.

By some mighty instinct Mrs. Wilson knew when to come in. She came to
the door just one minute after Lucy had capitulated, and, turning the
handle, but without opening the door, bawled some fresh directions to
Jenny: this was to enable Lucy to smooth her ruffled feathers, if
necessary, and look Agnes. But Lucy's actual contact with that honest
heart seemed to have made a change in her; instead of doing Agnes, she
confronted (after a fashion of her own) the situation she had so long
evaded.

"Oh, nurse!" she cried, and wreathed her arms round her.

"Don't cry, my lamb! I can guess."

"Cry? Oh no; I would not pay him so poor a compliment. It was to say,
'Dear nurse, you must love Mr. Dodd as well as me now.'"

The dame received this indirect intelligence with hearty delight.

"That won't cost me much trouble," said she. "He is the one I'd have
picked out of all England for my nursling. When a young man is kind to
an old woman, it is a good sign; but la! his face is enough for me:
who ever saw guile in such a face as that. Aren't ye hungry by this
time? Dinner will be ready in about a minute."

"Nurse, can I speak to you a word?"

"Yes, sure."

It was to inquire whether she would invite Miss Dodd.

"She loves her brother very dearly, and it is cruel to separate them.
Mr. Dodd will be nearly always here now, will he not?"

"You may take your davy of that."

In a very few minutes a note was written, and Mrs. Wilson's eldest
son, a handsome young farmer, started in the covered cart with his
mother's orders "to bring the young lady willy-nilly."


The holy allies both openly scouted Kenealy's advice, and both slyly
stepped down into the town and acted on it. Mr. Fountain then returned
to Font Abbey. Their two advertisements appeared side by side, and
exasperated them.

After dinner Mrs. Wilson sent Lucy and David out to take a walk. At
the gate they met with a little interruption; a carriage drove up; the
coachman touched his hat, and Mrs. Bazalgette put her head out of the
window.

"I came to take you back, love."

David quaked.

"Thank you, aunt; but it is not worth while now."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Bazalgette, casting a venomous look on David; "I am
too late, am I? Poor girl!"

Lucy soothed her aunt with the information that she was much happier
now than she had been for a long time past. For this was a
fencing-match.

"May I have a word in private with my niece?" inquired Mrs.
Bazalgette, bitterly, of David.

"Why not?" said David stoutly; but his heart turned sick as he
retired. Lucy saw the look of anxiety.

"Lucy," said Mrs. Bazalgette, "you left me because you are averse to
matrimony, and I urged you to it; of course, with those sentiments,
you have no idea of marrying that man there. I don't suspect you of
such hypocrisy, and therefore I say come home with me, and you shall
marry nobody; your inclination shall be free as air."

"Aunt," said Lucy, demurely, "why didn't you come yesterday? I always
said those who love me best would find me first, and you let Mr. Dodd
come first. I am so sorry!"

"Then your pretended aversion to marriage was all hypocrisy, was it?"

Lucy informed her that marriage was a contract, and the contracting
parties two, and no more--the bride and bridegroom; and that to sign a
contract without reading it is silly, and meaning not to keep it is
wicked. "So," said she, "I read the contract over in the prayer-book
this morning, for fear of accidents."

My reader may, perhaps, be amused at this admission; but Mrs.
Bazalgette was disgusted, and inquired, "What stuff is the girl
talking now?"

"It is called common sense. Well, I find the contract is one I can
carry out with Mr. Dodd, and with nobody else. I can love him a
little, can honor him a great deal, and obey him entirely. I begin
now. There he is; and if you feel you cannot show him the courtesy of
making him one in our conversation, permit me to retire and relieve
his solitude."

"Mighty fine; and if you don't instantly leave him and come home, you
shall never enter my house again."

"Unless sickness or trouble should visit your house, and then you will
send for me, and I shall come."

Mrs. Bazalgette (to the coachman).-- "Home!"

Lucy made her a polite obeisance, to keep up appearances before the
servants and the farm-people, who were gaping. She, whose breeding was
inferior, flounced into a corner without returning it. The carriage
drove off.

David inquired with great anxiety whether something had not been said
to vex her.

"Not in the least," replied Lucy, calmly. "Little things and little
people can no longer vex me. I have great duties to think of and a
great heart to share them with me. Let us walk toward Harrowden; we
may perhaps meet a friend."

Sure enough, just on this side Harrowden they met the covered cart,
and Eve in it, radiant with unexpected delight. The engaged ones--for
such they had become in those two miles--mounted the cart, and the two
men sat in front, and Eve and Lucy intertwined at the back, and opened
their hearts to each other.

Eve. And you have taken the paper off again?

Lucy. What paper? It was no longer applicable.



CHAPTER XXX.

I HAVE already noticed that Lucy, after capitulation, laid down her
arms gracefully and sensibly. When she was asked to name a very early
day for the wedding, she opposed no childish delay to David's
happiness, for the _Rajah_ was to sail in six weeks and separate
them. So the license was got, and the wedding-day came; and all Lucy's
previous study of the contract did not prevent her from being deeply
affected by the solemn words that joined her to David in holy
matrimony.

She bore up, though, stoutly; for her sense of propriety and courtesy
forbade her to cloud a festivity. But, when the post-chaise came to
convey bride and bridegroom on their little tour, and she had to leave
Mrs. Wilson and Eve for a whole week, the tears would not be denied;
and, to show how perilous a road matrimony is, these two risked a
misunderstanding on their wedding-day, thus: Lucy, all alone in the
post-chaise with David, dissolved--a perfect Niobe--gushing at short
intervals. Sometimes a faint explanation gurgled out with the tears:
"Poor Eve! her dear little face was working so not to cry. Oh! oh! I
should not have minded so much if she had cried right out." Then,
again, it was "Poor Mrs. Wilson! I was only a week with her, for all
her love. I have made a c--at's p--paw of her--oh!"

Then, again, "Uncle Bazalgette has never noticed us; he thinks me a
h--h--ypocrite." But quite as often they flowed without any
accompanying reason.

Now if David had been a poetaster, he would have said: "Why these
tears? she has got me. Am I not more than an equivalent to these puny
considerations?" and all this salt water would have burned into his
vanity like liquid caustic. If he had been a poet, he would have said:
"Alas! I make her unhappy whom I hoped to make happy"; and with this
he would have been sad, and so prolonged her sadness, and perhaps
ended by sulking. But David had two good things--a kind heart and a
skin not too thin: and such are the men that make women happy, in
spite of their weak nerves and craven spirits.

He gave her time; soothed her kindly; but did not check her weakness
dead short.

At last my Lady Chesterfield said to him, penitently, "This is a poor
compliment to you, Mr. Dodd"; and then Niobized again, partly, I
believe, with regret that she was behaving so discourteously.

"It is very natural," said David, kindly, "but we shall soon see them
all again, you know."

Presently she looked in his radiant face, with wet eyes, but a
half-smile. "You amaze me; you don't seem the least terrified at what
we have done."

"Not a bit," cried David, like a cheerful horn: "I have been in worse
peril than this, and so have you. Our troubles are all over; I see
nothing but happiness ahead." He then drew a sunny picture of their
future life, to all which she listened demurely; and, in short, he
treated her little feminine distress as the summer sun treats a mist
that tries to vie with it. He soon dried her up, and when they reached
their journey's end she was as bright as himself.



CHAPTER XXXI.

THEY had been married a week. A slight change, but quite distinct to
an observer of her sex, bloomed in Lucy's face and manner. A new
beauty was in her face--the blossom of wifehood. Her eyes, though not
less modest, were less timid than before; and now they often met
David's full, and seemed to sip affection at them. When he came near
her, her lovely frame showed itself conscious of his approach. His
queen, though he did not know it, was his vassal. They sat at table at
a little inn, twenty miles from Harrowden, for they were on their
return to Mrs. Wilson. Lucy went to the window while David settled the
bill. At the window it is probable she had her own thoughts, for she
glided up behind David, and, fanning his hair with her cool, honeyed
breath, she said, in the tone of a humble inquirer seeking historical
or antiquarian information, "I want to ask you a question, David: are
you happy _too?"_

David answered promptly, but inarticulately; so his reply is lost to
posterity. Conjecture alone survives.


One disappointment awaited Lucy at Mrs. Wilson's. There were several
letters for both David and her, but none from Mr. Bazalgette. She knew
by that she had lost his respect. She could not blame him, for she saw
how like disingenuousness and hypocrisy her conduct must look to him.
"I must trust to time and opportunity," she said, with a sigh. She
proposed to David to read all her letters, and she would read all his.
He thought this a droll idea; but nothing that identified him with his
royal vassal came amiss. The first letter of Lucy's that David opened
was from Mr. Talboys.


"DEAR MADAM--I have heard of your marriage with Mr. Dodd, and desire
to offer both you and him my cordial congratulations.

"I feel under considerable obligation to Mr. Dodd; and, should my
house ever have a mistress, I hope she will be able to tempt you both
to renew our acquaintance under my roof, and so give me once more that
opportunity I have too little improved of showing you both the sincere
respect and gratitude with which I am,

"Your very faithful servant,

"REGINALD TALBOYS."


Lucy was delighted with this note. "Who says it was nothing to have
been born a gentleman?"

The second letter was from Reginald No. 2; and, if I only give the
reader a fragment of it, I still expect his gratitude, all one as if I
had disinterred a fragment of Orpheus or Tiresias.

Dear lucy.
It is very ungust of you to go and
Mary other peeple wen you
Promised me. but it is mr. dod.
So i dont so much mind i like
Mr. dod. he is a duc. and they all
Say i am too litle and jane says
Sailors always end by been
Drouned so it is only put off.
But you reely must keep your
Promise to me. wen i am biger
And mr. Dod is drouned. my
Ginny pigs--


Here a white hand drew the pleasing composition out of David's hand,
and dropped it on the floor; two piteous, tearful eyes were bent on
him, and a white arm went tenderly round his neck to save him from the
threatened fate.

At this sight Eve pounced on the horrid scroll, and hurled it, with
general acclamation, into the flames.

Thus that sweet infant revenged himself, and, like Sampson, hit
hardest of all at parting--in tears and flame vanished from written
fiction, and, I conclude, went back to Gavarni.

There was a letter from Mr. Fountain--all fire and fury. She was never
to write or speak to him any more. He was now looking out for a youth
of good family to adopt and to make a Fontaine of by act of
Parliament, etc., etc. A fusillade of written thunderbolts.

There was another from Mrs. Bazalgette, written with cream--of tartar
and oil--of vitriol. She forgave her niece and wished her every
happiness it was possible for a young person to enjoy who had deceived
her relations and married beneath her. She felt pity rather than
anger; and there was no reason why Mr. and Mrs. Dodd should not visit
her house, as far as she was concerned; but Mr. Bazalgette was a man
of very stern rectitude, and, as she could not make sure that he would
treat them with common courtesy after what had passed, she thought a
temporary separation might be the better course for all parties.

I may as well take this opportunity of saying that these two egotists
carried out the promise of their respective letters. Mr. Fountain
blustered for a year or two, and then showed manifest signs of
relenting.

Mrs. Bazalgette kept cool, and wrote, in oils, twice a year to Mrs.
Dodd:

"ET GARDAIT TOUT DOUCEMENT UNE HAINE IRRECONCILIABLE."


Lucy had to answer these letters. In signing one of them, she took a
look at her new signature and smiled. "What a dear, quaint little name
mine is!" said she. "Lucy Dodd;" and she kissed the signature.

A Month after Marriage.

The Dodds took a house in London and Eve came up to them. David was
nearly all day superintending the ship, but spent the whole evening
with his wife at home. Zeal always produces irritation. The servant
that is anxious for his employer's interest is sure to get into a
passion or two with the deadness, indifference and heartless injustice
of the genuine hireling. So David was often irritated and worried, and
in hot water, while superintending the _Rajah,_ but the moment he
saw his own door, away he threw it all, and came into the house like a
jocund sunbeam. Nothing wins a woman more than this, provided she is
already inclined in the man's favor. As the hour that brought David
approached, Lucy's spirits and Eve's used both to rise by
anticipation, and that anticipation his hearty, genial temper never
disappointed.


One day Lucy came to David for information. "David, there is a
singular change in me. It is since we came to London. I used to be a
placid girl; now I am a fidget."

"I don't see it, love."

"No; how should you, dear? It always goes away when you come. Now
listen. When five o'clock comes near, I turn hot and restless, and can
hardly keep from the window; and if you are five minutes after your
time, I really cannot keep from the window; and my nerves _se
crispent,_ and I cannot sit still. It is very foolish. What does it
mean? Can you tell me?"

"Of course I can. I am just the same when people are unpunctual. It is
inexcusable, and nothing is so vexing. I ought to be--"

"Oh David, what nonsense! it is not that. Could I ever be vexed with
my David?"

"Well, then, there is Eve; we'll ask her."

"If you dare, sir!" and Mrs. Dodd was carnation.

Four years after the above events

Two ladies were gossiping.

1st Lady. "What I like about Mrs. Dodd is that she is so truthful."

2d Lady. "Oh, is she?"

1st Lady. "Yes, she is indeed. Certainly she is not a woman that
blurts out unpleasant things without any necessity; she is kind and
considerate in word and deed, but she is always true. She has got an
eye that meets you like a little lion's eye, and a tongue without
guile. I do love Mrs. Dodd dearly."


Two Qui his were talking in Leadenhall Street.

1st Qui hi. "Well, so you are going out again."

2d Qui hi. "Yes; they have offered me a commissionership. I must make
another lac for the children."

1st Qui hi. "When do you sail?"

2d Qui hi. "By the first good ship. I should like a good ship."

1st Qui hi. "Well, then, you had better go out with Gentleman Dodd."

2d Qui hi. "Gentleman Dodd? I should prefer Sailor Dodd. I don't want
to founder off the Cape."

1st Qui hi. "Oh, but this is a first-rate sailor, and a first-rate
fellow altogether."

2d Qui hi. "Then why do you call him 'Gentleman Dodd'?"

1st Qui hi. "Oh, because he is so polite. He won't stand an oath
within hearing of his quarter-deck, and is particularly kind and
courteous to the passengers, especially to the ladies. His ship is
always full."

2d Qui hi. "Is it? Then I'll go out with 'Gentleman Dodd.'"

--------------

TO MY MALE READERS.

I SEE with some surprise that there still linger in the field of
letters writers who think that, in fiction, when a personage speaks
with an air of conviction, the sentiments must be the author's own.
(When two of his personages give each other the lie, which represents
the author? both?)

I must ask you to shun this error; for instance, do not go and take
Eve Dodd's opinion of my heroine, or Mrs. Bazalgette's, for mine.

Miss Dodd, in particular, however epigrammatic she may appear, is
shallow: her criticism _peche par la base._ She talks too much as
if young girls were in the habit of looking into their own minds, like
little metaphysicians, and knowing all that goes on there; but, on the
contrary, this is just what women in general don't do, and young women
can't do.

No male will quite understand Lucy Fountain who does not take
"instinct" and "self-deception" into the account. But with those two
dews and your own intelligence, you cannot fail to unravel her, and
will, I hope, thank me in your hearts for leaving you something to
study, and not clogging my sluggish narrative with a mass of comment
and explanation.

The End.