Anthony Trollope - "La Mere Bauche from Tales of All Countries"

Ella Wheeler Wilcox - "Maurine and Other Poems"

Lafcadio Hearn - "Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation"

Anthony Trollope - "The House of Heine Brothers, in Munich"

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: My Young Alcides

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides




"You distinguished yourself too," I said.

"I? Why, I had a rifle. I galloped down to Grice's for mine at the
first, when I saw the menagerie people were cowed. What's that to
going at him alone, and mastering him too, as he had done before
those idiots thought proper to yell?"

Being talked about, of course, awoke Harold; his eyes opened, and he
answered for himself, greeting Dermot heartily. Only then did we
understand the full history of what had happened. The lion-tamer,
whose part it was to exhibit the liberty he could take with the
animals, was ill, and his assistant, after much bravado as to his
equal power, had felt his courage quail, and tried to renew it with
drink. Thus he was in no state to perceive that he had only shot-to
the bolt of the door of the cage; and his behaviour had so irritated
the beast that, after so dealing with him that he lay in a most
dangerous state, he had dashed out at the door in rage and terror,
and, after seizing the hindmost of the flying crowd, had lain down
between the shafts of the waggon, as we had seen him.

The keepers had lost their heads in the panic, and no one durst go
near him. The lion-tamer had to be called from his bed, in lodgings
in the town, and only came on the scene just as Dermot's rifle had
finished the struggle. The master had quite seen the necessity, but
was in great despair at the loss of so valuable an animal.

"I'll share in making it good to him," said Harold.

"You? You are the last to do so. If you had only been let alone,
the beast would have been captured unhurt. No, no! I settled all
that, as it was I who meddled in the matter when, I believe, you
could have settled him yourself."

"I don't know that," said Harold. "I was glad enough to see your
rifle at his ear. But I should like to have his skin, if they would
sell it."

Dermot explained that he had been bargaining for the skin, and hoped
Mr. Alison would accept it from him, but here Harold's resolution won
the day, much as Dermot evidently longed to lay the trophy at his
feet. Poor Dermot, I could see hero-worship growing in his eyes, as
they talked about horses, endlessly as men can and do talk of them,
and diligent inquiries elicited from Harold what things he had done
with the unbroken animal in Australia.

I went off the scene at once, but when I returned to luncheon they
were at it still. And Eustace's return with two steeds for Harold's
judgment renewed the subject with double vigour. Dermot gave his
counsel, and did not leave Arghouse without reiterating an invitation
to the cousins to come to-morrow to his cottage at Biston, to be
introduced to his stables, let doctors say what they might, and
Eustace was in raptures at the distinguished acquaintance he fancied
he had made for himself. He had learnt something of Mr. Tracy's
sporting renown, and saw himself introduced to all the hunting world
of the county, not to say of England.

It gave me a great deal to consider, knowing, as I did full well,
that poor Dermot's acquaintance was not likely to bring him into
favour with society, even if it were not dangerous in itself. And my
poor mother would not have been delighted at my day, a thing I had
totally forgotten in the pleasantness of having someone to talk to;
for it was six weeks since I had spoken to anyone beyond the family,
except Miss Woolmer. Besides, it was Dermot! And that was enough to
move me in itself.

I think I have said that his father was an Irish landlord, who was
shot at his own hall-door in his children's infancy. Lady Diana
brought them back to her old neighbourhood, and there reigned over
one of her brother's villages, with the greatest respect and
admiration from all, and viewed as a pattern matron, widow, and
parent. My mother was, I fancy, a little bit afraid of her, and
never entirely at ease with her. I know I was not, but she was so
"particular" about her children, that it was a great distinction to
be allowed to be intimate with them, and my mother was proud of my
being their licensed playfellow, when Horsmans and Stympsons were
held aloof. But even in those days, when I heard the little Tracys
spoken of as pattern children, I used to have an odd feeling of what
it was to be behind the scenes, and know how much of their fame
rested on Di. I gloried in the knowledge how much more charming the
other two were than anyone guessed, who thought them models of
propriety.

In truth, Dermot did not keep that reputation much longer than his
petticoats. Ere long he was a pickle of the first order, equalling
the sublime naughtiness of Holiday House, and was continually being
sent home by private tutors, who could not manage him. All the time
I had a secret conviction that, if he had been my own mother's son,
she could have managed him, and he would never have even wished to do
what she disapproved; but Lady Diana had no sympathy or warmth in
her, and while she loved her children she fretted them, and never
thawed nor unbent; and when she called in her brother's support,
Dermot's nerves were driven frantic by the long harangues, and his
relief was in antics which of course redoubled his offence. After he
had put crackers into his uncle's boots, peppered the coachman's wig,
inserted a live toad in the centre of a fortification of clear jelly
at a great luncheon, and had one Christmas painted the two stone wild
boars that guard the iron gates of Erymanth Castle into startling
resemblance of the porkers as displayed in butchers' shops, with a
little tin pail at the snout of each, labelling each sevenpence-
ha'penny per pound, his uncle had little more hope of him.

Dreading his father's fate for him, Lady Diana put him into the
Guards, to prevent him from living in Ireland, and there he fell into
all the usual temptations of his kind, so that everybody came to look
on him as a black sheep, and all the time I knew that, if any one had
taken him in the right way, he might have been kept out of it. Why
there was one talk that he and I had at a picnic on Kalydon Moor,
which showed me how hopeless he was of ever really pleasing or
satisfying his mother without being, what he could never be, like his
uncle in his youth, and how knowing that I cared really might make a
difference to him. But mamma and Lady Diana were both very much
vexed about that talk; mamma was angry with me; and when Dermot, in a
poetical game a little after, sent me some verses--well, with a
little more blarney and tenderness than the case required--there was
a real uproar about them. Di showed them to her mother, who
apologised in her lofty way for my having been insulted. Oh! how
angry it did make me; and mamma absolutely cried about it. It seems
foolish to say so, but if they would have let us alone I could have
done something towards inducing him to keep straight, whereas the way
he was treated by his mother and Di only made him worse. Poor mamma!
I don't wonder at her, when even his own mother and uncle would not
stand up for him; but I knew, whenever we met afterwards at ball or
party, that it was pain and grief to her for me to speak a word to
him, and that she thought me wrong to exchange anything beyond bare
civility. He was vexed, too, and did not try; and we heard worse and
worse of him, especially when he went over to his place in Ireland.

Then came the Crimean war, and all the chances of showing what I knew
he really was; but at the Alma he was wounded, not very dangerously,
but just touching his lungs, and after a long illness in London, the
doctors said he must not go back to Sebastopol, for to serve in the
trenches would be certain death to him. He wanted to go back all the
same, and had an instinct that it would be better for him, but his
mother and uncle prevented him and made him sell out, and after that,
when he had nothing to do--oh! there's no need to think of it.

In the course of this last year he had taken the shooting of Kalydon
Moor, and a house with it, with immense stables, which one of the
Horsmans had made for his hunters, and had ruined himself and died.
He had not quarrelled with his mother--indeed nobody could quarrel
with Dermot--and he used to go over to see her, but he would not live
at home, and since he had been at Biston I had never once met him
till I saw him run up to attack the lion, the only man in all the
fair except Harold who had courage to do so! I could not help my
heart bounding at the thought, and afterwards enjoying the talk with
him that I could not help. But then it made me feel undutiful to my
dear mother, and then there was the further difficulty to be faced.
It would have been all very well to live with my nephews if we had
been in a desert island, but I could not expect them not to make
friends of their own; and if mine chose to drop me, how would it be
for me, at my age, all alone in the house?

Harold was forced to confess that he had done too much that first
day. His hand was inflamed, and pain and weariness forbade all
thought of spending a long day from home; and, besides, there arrived
letters by the morning's post which left grave lines on his brow.

So Eustace drove off alone, a good deal elated at such an expedition,
and I took Harold to my own little sitting-room, so despised by Dora,
for the convenience of bathing the flesh wounds on the right hand,
which, though really the least injured, was a much greater torment
than the broken fingers, and had allowed him very little sleep.

It was the first time he had been in the room, and on the chimney-
piece stood open a miniature-case containing a portrait, by Thorburn,
of my little brother Percy, in loose brown holland. Harold started
as he came in, and exclaimed, "Where did that come from?" I told
him, and he exclaimed, "Shut it up, please," and sat down with his
back to it, resigning his hand to me, and thanking me warmly when the
fomentation brought some relief, and when I asked if I could do any
more for him he seemed undecided, extracted some letters from his
pocket with his two-fifths of a hand, and sent Dora to his room for
his writing-case. I offered to write anything for him, but he said,
"Let me try," and then endeavoured; but he found that not only did
the effort hurt him unbearably, but that he could not guide the pen
for more than a word or two; so he consented to make use of me,
saying, however, "Dora, it is no use your staying in; you had better
go out."

Dora, of course, wanted to stay; but I devised that she should go,
under the escort of one of the maids, to carry some broth to the
wounded boy, an expedition which would last her some time, and which
Harold enforced with all his might as a personal favour, till she
complied.

"Thank you," said Harold; "you see this must be done at once, or we
shall have them coming over here."

He gave me the sheet he had begun with "Dear Mother," and went on
dictating. It was not at all after Julius Caesar's fashion of
dictating. He sat with his eyes on his own letter, and uttered one
brief but ponderous sentence after another, each complete in all its
parts, and quite unhesitating, though slowly uttered. I gathered it
up, wrote it down, said "Well," and waited for more in silence, till,
after I had looked at him once or twice to see whether he were asleep
or in a reverie, another such sentence followed, and I began to know
him very much better.

After saying "My hands have been lamed for a few days, and my aunt is
so good as to write for me," he went on to say, in forcible and not
very affectionate terms, that "Smith must not think of coming home;
Eustace could do nothing for him there, but as long as the family
remained at Nelson their allowance should be increased by one hundred
pounds a year." I filled up an order, which he signed on a Sydney
bank for the first quarter. "It must not be more," he said, as he
told me the sum, "or they will be taking their passage with it."

"No more?" I asked, when he prepared to conclude this short letter.

"No. Smith reads all her letters."

"That is very hard on you."

"She meant to do well for me, but it was a great mistake. If Smith
comes home to prey upon Eustace, it will be a bad business."

"But he has no claim on Eustace, whatever he may think he has on
you."

"He is more likely to come now. He knows he can get nothing out of
me--" Then, as I looked at the order, he added, "Beyond my mother's
rights. Poor mother!"

I found that the schoolmaster had been induced to marry Alice Alison
in the expectation that her share in the proceeds of Boola Boola
would be much larger than it proved to be. He had fawned on the two
Eustaces, and obtained all he could from the elder, but, going too
far at last, had been detected by the Sydney bank in what amounted to
an embezzlement. Prosecution was waived, and he was assisted to
leave Australia and make a fresh start in New Zealand, whence he had
never ceased to endeavour to gain whatever he could from Boola Boola.
He could twist Eustace round his finger, and Harold, though loathing
and despising him, would do anything for his mother, but was
resolved, for Eustace's sake, to keep them at a distance, as could
only be done by never allowing them a sufficient sum at once to
obtain a passage home, and he knew the habits of Smith and his sons
too well to expect them to save it. In fact, the letter before him,
which he ended by giving me to read, had been written by the poor
woman at her husband's dictation, in the belief that Harold was the
heir, to demand their passage-money from him, and that there was a
sad little postscript put in afterwards, unknown to her tyrant. "My
boy, don't do it. It will be much better for you not;" and, brave
woman as she was, she added no entreaty that his refusal might be
softened. I asked if she had had any more children. "No, happily,"
was Harold's answer. "If I might only wring that fellow's neck, I
could take care of her." In fact, I should think, when he wanted to
come within Harold's grasp, he hardly knew what he asked.

This finished, it appeared that Harold wanted to have a letter
finished to Prometesky which he had begun some days before. This
astonished me more, both by the questions Prometesky had been asking,
and the answers Harold was returning, as to the state of the country
and the condition of the people. They did much to relieve my mind of
the fears I had sometimes entertained of Harold's being a ferocious
demagogue incited thereto by his friend.

Who would have thought there was so much depth in his brain? He
ended by saying, "Eustace takes kindly to his new position, and is
gone today to see Mr. Tracy, nephew to Lord Erymanth, but who does
not appear disposed to carry on the same hostility to us."

I exclaimed at his having said nothing of the lion either to his
mother or his friend, and asked leave to add it, which he did not
refuse, though saying there was no use in it, and that he wanted me
to do one thing more for him--namely, to write to his agent in Sydney
an order which he signed for the transmission of some money to
England. He had learnt from Mr. Yolland that morning that the
"Dragon's Head" and some adjoining houses at Mycening were for sale,
and that the purchaser could have immediate possession.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Shut it up."

"You can't do much good by shutting up one public-house."

"Eustace will do the same with those on his property."

"I am very much afraid your crusade will not succeed, unless you can
put something better into people's minds."

"I shall see about that," he answered, thinking, I believe, that I
was going to suggest religion, from all mention of which he shrank,
as if it touched a wound. "Smith talked of religion," he once said,
with a shudder. Besides, he was a creature in the superabundance of
all human faculties to whom their exercise seemed for a time all-
sufficient, and the dark shade of horror and remorse in the depths of
his heart made him unwilling to look back or think. At any rate, he
silenced me on that head; but, thinking, perhaps, that he had been
unkindly blunt, he resumed, "There is no risk for Eustace in this
acquaintance?"

In spite of the pang that smote me, I felt that this was the only
time I might have for that word of warning which seemed incumbent on
me. "I do not think there is danger in his going to-day, but it does
seem right to tell you that poor Dermot Tracy is said to be very
extravagant, and to lead a wild life. And Harold, though I have
known him all my life, I have been thinking that it will not do for
me to be here, if this should become a resort of the set of people he
has made friends of."

Harold answered in his steady, grave way, "I see. But, Lucy, I
suppose none of them have been so bad as I have been?"--rather as if
he were wondering over the matter.

"But you belong to me," I answered, and I saw a look of real pleasure
meet my smile.

"I wish I knew what was best for Eustace," he said, after a few more
moments' thought. "Is it doing him harm for me to be here? I could
go back to New South Wales at once, only in some ways I don't think
the old fellow could get on without me, till he is more used to it
all, and in safe hands."

I had no hesitation in answering that Eustace would be much worse off
without his cousin, and that the treatment we were receiving was
chiefly on account of the fathers of both, not personal to Harold.

"Then you think it would not help him for me to leave him?"

"I think he is far more likely to live it down with you to help him."

"But, Lucy, are you being given up by all your friends for our sakes?
We did not know it meant that when we asked you to stay with us!"

"No more did I. But don't be uneasy about that, Harold dear. Don't
you think one's own flesh and blood is more than all such friends?"

"I should not have thought two fellows like us could have been worth
much to you," said Harold, gravely pondering. "That pretty little
thing who was with you the night we came; she has never been here
again. Don't you miss her?"

"It is not her fault," I said. "Besides, nothing is like the tie of
blood."

I shall never forget the look that was in Harold's eyes. I was
standing over him, putting some fresh warm water on his hand. He put
back his head and looked up earnestly in my face, as if to see
whether I meant it, then said, "We are very thankful to you for
thinking so."

I could not help bending and touching his forehead with my lips. His
eyes glistened and twinkled, but he said nothing for a little space,
and then it was, "If any one like you had been out there--"

I don't think I ever had a compliment that gave me more pleasure, for
there was somehow an infinite sense of meaning in whatever Harold
said, however short it might be, as if his words had as much force in
them as his muscles.

After a good deal more of silent sponging and some knitting of his
brows, either from thought or from pain, he said, "Then, as I
understand, you cast in your lot with us, and give us the blessing of
your presence and care of poor little Dora, to help to set Eustace in
his proper place in society. I see then that it is your due that we
should bring no one here of whom you do not fully approve."

"It is not only a matter of approval," I explained. "There are many
with whom I could freely associate in general society, or if I had
any lady with me, whom I ought not to have constantly here with only
you two."

"England is different from the Bush," he answered, and meditated for
ten minutes more, for no doubt it was the Australian practice to
offer free quarters to all comers without Mrs. Grundy, who had hardly
yet had her free passage. My heart smote me lest I were acting
unkindly for her sake, but then surely I was saving my allegiance to
my dead mother, and while I was still thinking it over, Harold said:

"You are more to us than any one could be; Eustace shall see the
thing rightly, and while you are good enough to make this our home, I
promise you that no one shall be invited here but as you like."

It was a bold promise, especially as it turned out that Eustace had
been making large invitations to the Arghouse fishing to Dermot Tracy
and some officer friends whom he had found at Biston, and who seemed
to have made themselves very pleasant. I bade Harold never mind
about that sort of invitation, as it need not affect Dora or me,
since we could keep out of the way of it, being unconcerned with
gentlemen's parties. Miss Woolmer said I had done right, and gave us
a general invitation to spend the evening with her if Eustace wished
to entertain his friends, though she hinted, "Don't be too ready to
leave the coast clear. Remember that you are a wholesome check."




CHAPTER III. THE "DRAGON'S HEAD."



Harold's right hand healed quickly, and was free in a few days, but
the left had to be kept for some time in a sling, and be daily
attended to, though he heeded it but little, walking miles to look at
horses and to try them, for he could manage them perfectly with one
hand, and in this way he saw a good deal of Dermot Tracy, who exerted
himself to find a horse to carry the mighty frame.

The catastrophe at the fair had gained him two friends, entirely
unlike one another--Dermot, who thenceforward viewed him with
unvarying hero-worship, and accepted Eustace as his appendage; and
George Yolland, the very reverse of all Dermot's high-bred form of
Irishism, and careless, easy self-indulgence.

A rough-hewn, rugged young man, intensely in earnest, and therefore
neither popular nor successful was that young partner of Dr.
Kingston. Had Harold been squire, the resignation of the patient
into his hands would have been less facile; but as a mere Australian
visitor, he was no prize, and might follow his own taste if he
preferred the practitioner to whom club, cottage, and union patients
were abandoned.

By him Harold was let into those secrets of the lower stratum of
society he had longed to understand. Attention to the poor boy who
had been torn by the lion brought him into the great village of
workmen's huts, that had risen up round the Hydriot clay works on the
Lerne.

These had been set up by a company about eighteen years before, much
against all our wills. With Lord Erymanth at our head, we had
opposed with all our might the breaking up of the beautiful moorland
that ran right down into Mycening, and the defilement of our pure and
rapid Lerne; but modern progress had been too strong for us. Huge
brick inclosures with unpleasant smoky chimneys had arisen, and
around them a whole colony of bare, ugly little houses, filled with
squalid women and children, little the better for the men's wages
when they were high, and now that the Company was in a languishing
state, miserable beyond description. We county people had simply
viewed ourselves as the injured parties by this importation, bemoaned
the ugliness of the erections, were furious at the interruptions to
our country walks, prophesied the total collapse of the Company, and
never suspected that we had any duties towards the potters. The
works were lingering on, only just not perishing; the wages that the
men did get, such as they were, went in drink; the town in that
quarter was really unsafe in the evening; and the most ardent hope of
all the neighbourhood was, that the total ruin constantly expected
would lead to the migration of all the wretched population.

Mr. Yolland, who attended most of their sicknesses, used to tell
fearful things of the misery, vice, and hardness, and did acts of
almost heroic kindness among them, which did not seem consistent with
what, to my grief and dismay, was reported of this chosen companion
of Harold--that physical science had conducted him into materialism.
The chief comfort I had was that Miss Woolmer liked him and opened
her house to him. She was one of the large-hearted women who can see
the good through the evil, and was interested by contact with all
phases of thought; and, moreover, the lad should not be lost for want
of the entree to something like a home, because the upper crust of
Mycening considered him as "only Dr. Kingston's partner," and the
Kingstons themselves had the sort of sense that he was too much for
them which makes a spider dislike to have a bluebottle in his web.

She was interested, too, rather sadly in the crusade without the
cross that the two young men were trying to undertake against the
wretchedness of those potters.

It was much in their favour that the landlord, who was also the owner
of the "Dragon's Head," was invited to join a brother in America
without loss of time, and was ready to sell and give immediate
possession; so that Harry actually owned it in a fortnight from first
hearing of the offer, having, of course, given a heavy price for it.