The following day was the Fourth of July, and the next was the one fixed on by Mr. and Mrs. Ledbury for returning to New York. That morning, at the breakfast-table, the number of guests was increased by the presence of a Mr. Jenkins, who had come from the city in the same boat with Miss Melbourne and her friends, and after passing a few days at West Point, had gone up the river to visit some relations at Poughkeepsie, from whence he had just returned. Mr. Jenkins was a shallow, conceited, over-dressed young man, and, moreover, extremely ugly, though of this misfortune he was not in the least aware. He was of a family whose wealth had not made them genteel. He professed great politeness to the ladies, that is, if they had beauty and money; yet he always declared that he would marry nothing under a hundred thousand dollars. But he was good-natured; and that, and his utter insignificance, got him along tolerably well, for no one ever thought it worth while to be offended at his folly and self-sufficiency.
After breakfast, Mrs. Ledbury asked Orinda if she had prevailed on Mr.
Sunderland to write an article in her album, adding--"I heard you urging him to that effect the other day, as I passed the front parlour."
"I found him inexorable, as to writing," replied Orinda.
"Well, really," said Mr. Jenkins, "I don't know how a gentleman can reconcile himself to refuse anything a lady asks. And he an officer too!
For my part, I always hold it my bounden duty to oblige the ladies, and never on any account to treat them with _hauteur_, as the French call it. To be sure, I am not a marrying man--that is, I do not marry under a hundred thousand--but still, that is no reason why I should not be always polite and agreeable. _Apropos_, as the French say--_apropos_, Miss Melbourne, you know _I_ offered the other day to write something for you in your album, and I will do it with all the pleasure in life. I am very partial to albums, and quite _au-fait_ to them, to use a French term."
"We return to the city this afternoon," said Orinda. "You will scarcely have time to add anything to the treasures of _my_ album."
"Oh! it won't take me long," replied Jenkins; "short and sweet is _my_ motto. There will be quite time enough. You see I have already finished my breakfast. I am not the least of a _gourmand_, to borrow a word from the French."
Orinda had really some curiosity to see a specimen of Jenkins's poetry: supposing that, like the poor cadet's, it might be amusingly bad.
Therefore, having sent for her album, she put it hastily into Jenkins's hand: for at that moment Lieutenant Sunderland, who had, as usual, breakfasted at the mess-table with his brother officers, came in to invite her to walk with him to Gee's Point. Orinda assented, and immediately put on her bonnet, saying to her lover as she left the house--
"You know this is one of my favourite walks--I like that fine mass of bare granite running far out into the river, and the beautiful view from its extreme point. And then the road, by which we descend to it, is so charmingly picturesque, with its deep ravine on one side, filled with trees and flowering shrubs, and the dark and lofty cliff that towers up on the other, where the thick vine wanders in festoons, and the branches of the wild rose throw their long streamers down the rock, whose utmost heights are crowned with still-lingering remnants of the grass-grown ruins of Fort Clinton."
But we question if, on this eventful morning, the beauties of Gee's Point were duly appreciated by our heroine, for long before they had reached it, her lover had made an explicit avowal of his feelings and his hopes, and had obtained from her the promise of her hand: which promise was faithfully fulfilled on that day two months.
In the afternoon, Lieutenant Sunderland accompanied Miss Melbourne and her friends on their return to the city. Previous to her departure, Orinda did not forgot to remind Mr. Jenkins of her album, now doubly valuable to her as containing the name of La Fayette, written by his own hand.
Jenkins begged a thousand pardons, alleging that the arrival of a friend from New York, had prevented him from writing in it, as he had intended.
"And of course," said he, "I could not put off my friend, as he is one of the _elite_ of the city, to describe him in French. However, there is time enough yet. Short and sweet, you know"--
"The boat is in sight," said Sunderland.
"Oh! no matter," answered Jenkins. "I can do it in a minute, and I will send it down to the boat after you. Miss Melbourne shall have it before she quits the wharf. I would on no consideration be guilty of disappointing a lady."
And taking with him the album, he went directly to his room.
"You had best go down to the dock," said the cadet, young Melbourne, who had come to see his sister off. "There is no time to be lost. I will take care that the album reaches you in safety, should you be obliged to go without it."
They proceeded towards the river, but they had scarcely got as far as Mrs. Thomson's, when a waiter came running after them with the book, saying--"Mr. Jenkins's compliments to Miss Melbourne, and all is right."
"Really," said Sunderland, "that silly fellow must have a machine for making verses, to have turned out anything like poetry in so short a time."
They were scarcely seated on the deck of the steamboat, when Orinda opened her album to look for the inspirations of Jenkins's Muse. She found no verses. But on the very page consecrated by the hand of La Fayette, and immediately under the autograph of the hero, was written, in an awkward school-boy character, the name of Jeremiah Jenkins.
THE SET OF CHINA.
"How thrive the beauties of the graphic art?"--PETER PINDAR.
"Mr. Gummage," said Mrs. Atmore, as she entered a certain drawing-school, at that time the most fashionable in Philadelphia, "I have brought you a new pupil, my daughter, Miss Marianne Atmore. Have you a vacancy?"
"Why, I can't say that I have," replied Mr. Gummage; "I never have vacancies."
"I am very sorry to hear it," said Mrs. Atmore; and Miss Marianne, a tall, handsome girl of fifteen, looked disappointed.
"But perhaps I _could_ strain a point, and find a place for her,"
resumed Mr. Gummage, who knew very well that he never had the smallest idea of limiting the number of his pupils, and that if twenty more were to apply, he would take them every one, however full his school might be.
"Do, pray, Mr. Gummage," said Mrs. Atmore; "do try and make an exertion to admit my daughter; I shall regard it as a particular favour."
"Well, I believe she may come," replied Gummage: "I suppose I can take her. Has she any turn for drawing?"
"I don't know," answered Mrs. Atmore; "she has never tried."
"So much the better," said Gummage; "I like girls that have never tried; they are much more manageable than those that have been scratching and daubing at home all their lives."
Mr. Gummage was no gentleman, either in appearance or manner. But he passed for a genius among those who knew nothing of that ill-understood race. He had a hooked nose that turned to the right, and a crooked mouth that turned to the left--his face being very much out of drawing,--and he had two round eyes that in colour and expression resembled two hazel-nuts. His lips were "pea-green and blue," from the habit of putting the brushes into his mouth when they were overcharged with colour. He took snuff illimitably, and generally carried half a dozen handkerchiefs, some of which, however, were to wrap his dinner in, as he conveyed it from market in his capacious pockets; others, as he said, were "to wipe the girl's saucers."
His usual costume was an old dusty brown coat, corduroy pantaloons, and a waistcoat that had once been red, boots that had once been black, and a low crowned rusty hat--which was never off his head, even in the presence of the ladies--and a bandanna cravat. The vulgarity of his habits, and the rudeness of his deportment, all passed off under the title of eccentricity. At the period when he flourished--it was long before the time of Sully--the _beau ideal_ of an artist, at least among the multitude, was an ugly, ill-mannered, dirty fellow, that painted an inch thick in divers gaudy colours, equally irreconcileable to nature and art. And the chief attractions of a drawing master--for Mr. Gummage was nothing more--lay in doing almost everything himself, and producing for his pupils, in their first quarter, pictures (so called) that were pronounced "fit to frame."
"Well, madam," said Mr. Gummage, "what do you wish your daughter to learn? figures, flowers, or landscapes?"
"Oh! all three," replied Mrs. Atmore. "We have been furnishing our new house, and I told Mr. Atmore that he need not get any pictures for the front parlour, as I would much prefer having them all painted by Marianne. She has been four quarters with Miss Julia,[72] and has worked Friendship and Innocence, which cost, altogether, upwards of a hundred dollars. Do you know the piece, Mr. Gummage? There is a tomb with a weeping willow, and two ladies with long hair, one dressed in pink, the other in blue, holding a wreath between them over the top of the urn.
The ladies are Friendship. Then on the right hand of the piece is a cottage, and an oak, and a little girl dressed in yellow, sitting on a green bank, and putting a wreath round the neck of a lamb. Nothing can be more natural than the lamb's wool. It is done entirely in French knots. The child and the lamb are Innocence."
[Footnote 72: Miss Julianna Bater, an old Moravian lady, from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who was well known in Philadelphia, many years since, as a teacher of embroidery.]
"Ay, ay," said Gummage, "I know the piece well enough--I've drawn them by dozens."
"Well," continued Mrs. Atmore, "this satin piece hangs over the front parlour mantel. It is much prettier and better done than the one Miss Longstitch worked, of Charlotte at the tomb of Werter, though she _did_ sew silver spangles all over Charlotte's lilac gown, and used chenille, at a fi'-penny-bit a needleful, for all the banks and the large tree.
Now, as the mantel-piece is provided for, I wish a landscape for each of the recesses, and a figure-piece to hang on each side of the large looking-glass, with flower-pieces under them, all by Marianne. Can she do all these in one quarter?"
"No, that she can't," replied Gummage; "it will take her two quarters'
hard work, and may be three, to get through the whole of them."
"Well, I won't stand about a quarter more or less," said Mrs. Atmore; "but what I wish Marianne to do most particularly, and, indeed, the chief reason why I send her to drawing-school just now, is a pattern for a set of china that we are going to have made in Canton. I was told the other day by a New York lady (who was quite tired of the queer, unmeaning things which are generally put on India ware), that she had sent a pattern for a tea-set, drawn by her daughter, and that every article came out with the identical device beautifully done on the china, all in the proper colours. She said it was talked of all over New York, and that people who had never been at the house before, came to look at and admire it. No doubt it was a great feather in her daughter's cap."
"Possibly, madam," said Gummage.
"And now," resumed Mrs. Atmore, "since I heard this, I have thought of nothing else than having the same thing done in my family; only I shall send for a dinner set, and a very long one, too. Mr. Atmore tells me that the Voltaire, one of Stephen Girard's ships, sails for Canton early next month, and he is well acquainted with the captain, who will attend to the order for the china. I suppose in the course of a fortnight Marianne will have learnt drawing enough to enable her to do the pattern?"
"Oh! yes, madam--quite enough," replied Gummage, suppressing a laugh.
"Very well," said Mrs. Atmore. "And now, Mr. Gummage, let me look at some of your models."
"Figures, flowers, or landscapes?" asked the artist.
"Oh! some of each," replied the lady.
Mr. Gummage had so many pupils--both boys and girls--and so many classes, and gave lessons besides, at so many boarding-schools, that he had no leisure time for receiving applications, and as he kept his domicile incog. he saw all his visitors at his school-room. Foreseeing a long examination of the prints, he took from a hanging shelf several of his numerous portfolios, and having placed them on a table before Mrs.