my rent, and where to get a farthing I can't tell. I dare say he would let us off now if I would but give him Chloe; but that I can't find in my heart to do. He's a hard man, and a bad dog-master. I've all along been afraid that we must part with Chloe, now that she's growing up like, because of our living so near the preserves-” "Oh, grandmother!"-interrupted Tom,"poor Chloe!" "But I can't give her to him. Don't cry so, Tom! I'd sooner have my little goods sold, and lie upon the boards. I should not mind parting with her if she were taken good care of, but I never will give her to him." "Is this the first you have heard of the matter?" inquired my father; "you ought to have had notice in time to appeal." "I never heard a word till to-day." "Poulton seems to say that he sent a letter, nevertheless, and offers to prove the sending, if need be; it's not in our division, not even in our county, and I am afraid that in this matter of the surcharge I can do nothing," observed my father; "though I have no doubt but it's a rascally trick to come by the dog. She's a pretty creature," continued he, stooping down to pat her, and examining her head and mouth with the air of a connoisseur in canine affairs, "a very fine creature. How old is she?" "Not quite a twelvemonth, sir. She was pupped on the sixteenth of last October, grandmother's birthday, of all the days in the year," said Tom, somewhat comforted by his visiter's evident sympathy. ed the danger of offending their good landlord, Sir John, by keeping a sporting dog so near his coverts, and also the difficulty of paying the tax; and both she and Tom had made up their minds to offer Chloe to my father. He had admired her, and everybody said that he was as good a dog-master as Mr. Poulton was a bad one; and he came sometimes coursing to Ashley End, and then perhaps he would let them both see Chloe; "for grandmother," said Tom, "though she seemed somehow ashamed to confess as much, was at the bottom of her heart pretty nigh as fond of her as he was himself. Indeed, he did not know who could help being fond of Chloe, she had so many pretty ways." And Tom, making manful battle against the tears that would start into his eyes, almost as full of affection as the eyes of Chloe herself, and hugging his beautiful pet, who seemed upon her part to have a presentiment of the evil that awaited her, sate down as requested in the hall, whilst my father considered his proposition. Upon the whole, it seemed to us kindest to the parties concerned, the widow King, Tom, and Chloe, to accept the gift. Sir John was a kind man, and a good landlord, but he was also a keen sportsman; and it was quite certain that he would have no great taste for a dog of such high sporting blood close to his best preserves; the keeper also would probably seize hold of such a neighbour as a scapegoat, in case of any deficiency in the number of hares and pheasants; and then their great enemy, Mr. Poulton, might avail himself of some technical deficiency to bring Mrs. King within the clutch of a surcharge. There might not always be an oversight in that Shylock's bond, nor a wise judge, young or old, to detect it if there were. So that, upon due consideration, my father (determined, of course, to make a proper return for the present) agreed to consider Chloe as his own property; and Tom, having seen her very comfortably installed in clean dry straw in a warm stable, and fed in a manner which gave a satisfactory specimen of her future diet, and being himself regaled with plum-cake and cherry brandy, (a liquor of which he had, he said, heard much talk, and which proved, as my father had augured, exceedingly cheering and consolatory in the moment of affliction,) departed in much better spirits than could have been expected after such a separation. I myself, duly appreciating the merits of Chloe, was a little jealous for my own noble Dash, whom she resembled, with a slight inferiority of size and colouring; much such a resemblance as Viola, About a week after, Tom and Chloe, in I suppose, bore to Sebastian. But upon being their turn, appeared at our cottage. All had reminded of the affinity between the two dogs, gone right in the matter of the surcharge. (for Dash came originally from Ashley End The commissioners had decided in Mrs. King's kennel, and was, as nearly as we could make favour, and Mr. Poulton had been forced to out, granduncle to Chloe,) and of our singusuccumb. But the grandmother had consider-lar good fortune in having two such beautiful "The sixteenth of October! Then Mr. Poulton may bid good-bye to his surcharge; for unless she was six months old on the fifth of April she cannot be taxed for this year so this letter is so much waste paper. I'll write this very night to the chairman of the commissioners, and manage the matter for you. And I'll also write to Master Poulton, and let him know that I'll acquaint the board if he gives you any further trouble. You're sure that you can prove the day she was pupped?" continued his worship, highly delighted. "Very lucky! You'll have nothing to pay for her till next half-year, and then I'm afraid that this fellow, Poulton, will insist upon her being entered as a sporting dog, which is fourteen shillings. But that's a future concern. As to the surcharge, I'll take care of that. A beautiful creature, is she not, Mary Very lucky that we happened to drive this way." And with kind adieus to Tom and his grandmother, who were as grateful as people could be, we departed. spaniels under one roof, my objections were entirely removed. Under the same roof they did not seem likely to continue. When sent after to the stable the next morning, Chloe was missing. Everybody declared that the door had not been opened, and Dick, who had her in charge, vowed that the key had never been out of his pocket. But accusations and affirmations were equally useless the bird was flown. Of course she had returned to Ashley End. And upon being sent for to her old abode, Tom was found preparing to bring her to Aberleigh; and Mrs. King suggested, that, having been accustomed to live with them, she would, perhaps, sooner get accustomed to the kitchen fireside than to a stable, however comfortable. The suggestion was followed. A mat was placed by the side of the kitchen fire; much pains were taken to coax the shy stranger; (Dick, who loved and understood dogs, devoting himself to the task of making himself agreeable to this gentle and beautiful creature;) and she seemed so far reconciled as to suffer his caresses, to lap a little milk when sure that nobody saw her, and even to bridle with instinctive coquetry, when Dash, head and tail up, advanced with a sort of stately and conscious courtesy to examine into the claims of the new-comer. For the first evening all seemed promising; but on the next morning, nobody knew how or when, Chloe eloped to her old quarters. Again she was fetched back; this time to the parlour and again she ran away. Then she was tied up, and she gnawed the string; chained up, and she slipped the collar; and we began to think, that unless we could find some good home for her at a distance, there was nothing for it but to return her altogether ito Mrs. King, when a letter from a friend at Bath, gave a new aspect to Chloe's affairs. A distant home was wanted for Chloe: and what home could open a brighter prospect of canine felicity than to be the pet of Mrs. Keating, and the playmate of Pretty May? It seemed one of those startling coincidences which amuse one by their singular fitness and propriety, and make one believe that there is more in the exploded doctrine of sympathies than can be found in our philosophy. So, upon the matter being explained to her, thought Mrs. King; and writing duly to announce the arrival of Chloe, she was deposited, with a quantity of soft hay, in a large hamper, and conveyed into Belford by my father himself, who would entrust to none other the office of delivering her to the coachman, and charging that very civil member of a very civil body of men to have especial care of the pretty creature, who was parted with for no other fault than an excess of affection and fidelity to her first kind protectors. Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of her reception. Pretty May, the sweet smiling child of a sweet smiling mother, had been kept up a full hour after her usual time to welcome the stranger, and was so charmed with this her first living toy, that it was difficult to get her to bed. She divided her own supper with poor Chloe, hungry after her long journey; rolled with her upon the Turkey carpet, and at last fell asleep with her arms clasped round her new pet's neck, and her bright face, coloured like lilies and roses, flung across her body; Chloe enduring these caresses with a careful, quiet gentleness, which immediately won for her the hearts of the lovely mother, of the fond father, (for to an accomplished and right-minded man, in delicate health, what a treasure is a little prattling girl, his only one!) of two grandmothers, of three or four young aunts, and of the whole tribe of nursery attendants. Never was debût so successful, as Chloe's first appearance in Camden Place. The letter was from a dear friend of minea young married lady, with an invalid hus- As her new dog had been Pretty May's last band, and one lovely little girl, a damsel of thought at night, so was it her first on awaksome two years old, commonly called "Pretty ening. He shared her breakfast as he had May." They wanted a pet dog to live in the shared her supper; and immediately after parlour, and walk out with mother and daugh- breakfast, mother and daughter, attended by ter not a cross yelping Blenheim spaniel, nursery-maid and footman, sallied forth to (those troublesome little creatures spoil every- provide proper luxuries for Chloe's accommobody's manners who is so unlucky as to pos- dation. First they purchased a sheepskin sess them, the first five minutes of every rug; then a splendid porcelain trough for wamorning call being invariably devoted to si- ter, and a porcelain dish to match, for food; lencing the lapdog and apologising to the vis- then a spaniel basket, duly lined, and stuffed, iter,)-not a pigmy Blenheim, but a large no- and curtained-a splendid piece of canine upble animal, something, in short, as like as holstery; then a necklace-like collar with silmight be to Dash, with whom Mrs. Keating ver bells, which was left to have the address had a personal acquaintance, and for whom, engraved upon the clasp; and then May, findin common with most of his acquaintances, ing herself in the vicinity of a hosier and a she entertained a very decided partiality: I do shoemaker, bethought herself of a want which not believe that there is a dog in England who undoubtedly had not occurred to any other of has more friends than my Dash. A spaniel her party, and holding up her own pretty little was wanted at Bath like my Dash: and what foot, demanded "tilk tocks and boo thoose for spaniel could be more like Dash than Chloe? | Tloë." done for that boy-he's a fine spanking fellow. We must consult his grandmother. The descendant of two faithful servants has an hereditary claim to all that can be done for him. How could you imagine that I should be thinking of these coverts?--I, that am as great a dog-lover as Dame King herself! I have a great mind to be very angry with you.' For two days did Chloe endure the petting Tom. By the way, we must see what can be and the luxuries. On the third she disappeared. Great was the consternation in Camden Place. Pretty May cried as she had never been known to cry before; and papa, mamma, grandmammas, aunts, nursery and housemaids, fretted and wondered, wondered and fretted, and vented their distress in every variety of exclamation, from the refined language of the drawing-room to the patois of a Somersetshire kitchen. Rewards were offered, and handbills dispersed over the town. She was cried, and she was advertised; and at last, giving up every hope of her recovery, Mrs. Keating wrote to me. These words, spoken in the good sportsman's earnest, hearty, joyous, kindly voice, (that ought to have given an assurance of his kindly nature, I have a religious faith in voices,) these words brought us within sight of Ashley End, and there, in front of the cottage, we saw a group which fixed our attention at once: Chloe, her own identical self-poor, dear Chloe, apparently just arrived, dirty, weary, jaded, wet, lying in Tom's arms as he sat on the ground, feeding her with the bacon and cabbage, his own and his grandmother's dinner, all the contents of the platter; and she, too happy to eat, wagging her tail as if she would wag it off; now licking Mrs. King's hands as the good old dame leant over her, the tears streaming from her eyes: now It happened that we received the letter on one of those soft November days, which some times intervene between the rough winds of October and the crisp frosts of Christmas, and which, although too dirty under foot to be quite pleasant for walking, are yet, during the few hours that the sun is above the horizon, mild enough for an open carriage in our shady lanes, strewed as they are at that period with the yellow leaves of the elm, whilst the hedgerows are still rich with the tawny foliage of the oak, and the rich colouring of the haw-kissing Tom's honest face, who broke into thorn and the bramble. It was such weather as the Americans generally enjoy at this season, and call by the pretty name of the Indian summer. And we resolved to avail ourselves of the fineness of the day to drive to Ashley End, and inform Mrs. King and Tom (who we felt ought to know) of the loss of Chloe, and our fear, according with Mrs. Keating's, that she had been stolen; adding our persuasion, which was also that of Mrs. Keating, that, fall into whatever hands she might, she was too beautiful and valuable not to ensure good usage. On the way we were overtaken by the good widow's landlord, returning from hunting, in his red coat and top-boots, who was also bound to Ashley End. As he rode chatting by the side of the carriage, we could not forbear telling him our present errand, and the whole story of poor Chloe. How often, without being particularly uncharitable in judging of our neighbours, we have the gratification of finding them even better than we had supposed! He blamed us for not having thought well enough of him to put the whole affair into his management from the first, and exclaimed against us for fearing that he would compare the preserves and the pheasant-shooting with such an attachment as had subsisted between his good old tenant and her faithful dog. By Jove!" cried he, "I would have paid the tax myself rather than they should have been parted. But it's too late to talk of that now, for, of course, the dog is stolen. Eighty miles is too far even for a spaniel to find its way back! Carried by coach, too! I would give twenty pounds willingly to replace her with old Dame King and Master loud laughter for very joy, and, with looks that spoke as plain as ever looks did speak, "Here I am come home again to those whom I love best to those who best love me!" Poor dear Chloe! Even we whom she left, sympathised with her fidelity. Poor dear Chloe! there we found her, and there, I need not, I hope, say, we left her, one of the happiest of living creatures. THE LOST DAHLIA. IF to have" had losses" be, as affirmed by Dogberry, in one of Shakspeare's most charming plays, and corroborated by Sir Walter Scott in one of his most charming romances (those two names do well in juxtaposition, the great Englishman! the great Scotsman !) If to have "had losses" be a main proof of credit and respectability, then am I one of the most responsible persons in the whole county of Berks. To say nothing of the graver matters which figure in a banker's book, and make, in these days of pounds, shillings, and pence, so large a part of the domestic tragedy of life-putting wholly aside all the grander transitions of property in house and land, of money on mortgage, and money in the funds (and yet I might put in my claim to no trifling amount of ill luck in that way also, if I had a mind to try my hand at a dismal story) - counting for nought all weightier grievances, there is not a lady within twenty miles who can produce so large a list of small losses as my unfortunate self. From the day when, a tiny damsel of some four years old, I first had a pocket-handkerchief to lose, down to this very night-I will not say how many years after-when, as I have just discovered, I have most certainly lost from my pocket the new cambric kerchief which I deposited therein a little before dinner, scarcely a week has passed without some part of my goods and chattels being returned missing. Gloves, muffs, parasols, reticules, have each of them a provoking knack of falling from my hands; boas glide from my neck, rings slip from my fingers, the bow has vanished from my cap, the veil from my bonnet, the sandal from my foot, the brooch from my collar, and the collar from my brooch. The trinket which I liked best, a jewelled pin, the first gift of a dear friend, (luckily the friendship is not necessarily appended to the token,) dropped from my shawl in the midst of the high road; and of shawls themselves, there is no end to the loss. The two prettiest that ever I had in my life, one a splendid specimen of Glasgow manufacture-a scarlet hardly to be distinguished from Cashmerethe other a lighter and cheaper fabric, white in the centre, with a delicate sprig, and a border harmoniously compounded of the deepest blue, the brightest orange, and the richest brown, disappeared in two successive summers and winters, in the very bloom of their novelty, from the folds of the phaeton, in which they had been deposited for safety fairly blown overboard!" If I left things about, they were lost. If I put them away, they were lost. They were lost in the drawers -they were lost out. And if for a miracle 1 had them safe under lock and key, why, then, I lost my keys! I was certainly the most unlucky person under the sun. If there was nothing else to lose, I was fain to lose myself I mean my way; bewildered in these Aberleigh lanes of ours, or in the woodland recesses of the Penge, as if haunted by that fairy, Robin Goodfellow, who led Hermia and Helena such a dance in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Alas! that there should be no Fairies now-a-days, or rather, no true believers in Fairies, to help us to bear the burthen of our own mortal carelessness. It was not quite all carelessness, though! Some ill luck did mingle with a great deal of mismanagement, as the "one poor happ'orth of bread" with the huge gallon of sack in the bill of which Poins picked Falstaff's pocket when he was asleep behind the arras. Things belonging to me, or things that I cared for, did contrive to get lost, without my having any hand in the matter. For instance, if out of the variety of "talking birds," starlings, jackdaws, and magpies, which my father delights to entertain, any one particularly diverting or accomplished, more than usually coaxing and mischievous, happened to attract my attention, and to pay me the compliment of following at my heels, or perching upon my shoulder, the gentleman was sure to hop off. My favourite mare, Pearl, the pretty docile creature which draws my little phaeton, has such a talent for leaping, that she is no sooner turned out in either of our meadows, than she disappears. And Dash himself, paragon of spaniels, pet of pets, beauty of beauties, has only one shade of imperfection-would be thoroughly faultless, if it were not for a slight tendency to run away. He is regularly lost four or five times every winter, and has been oftener cried through the streets of Belford, and advertised in the county newspapers, than comports with a dog of his dignity. Now, these mischances clearly belong to that class of accidents commonly called casualties, and are quite unconnected with any infirmity of temperament on my part. I cannot help Pearl's proficiency in jumping, nor Dash's propensity to wander through the country; neither had I any hand in the loss which has given its title to this paper, and which, after so much previous dallying, I am at length about to narrate. The autumn before last, that is to say, above a year ago, the boast and glory of my little garden was a dahlia called the Phoebus. How it came there, nobody very distinctly knew, nor where it came from, nor how we came by it, nor how it came by its own most appropriate name. Neither the lad who tends our flowers, nor my father, the person chiefly concerned in procuring them, nor I myself, who more even than my father or John take delight and pride in their beauty, could recollect who gave us this most splendid plant, or who first instructed us as to the style and title by which it was known. Certes never was blossom fitlier named. Regular as the sun's face in an almanac, it had a tint of golden scarlet, of ruddy yellow, which realized Shakspeare's gorgeous expression of "flame coloured." The sky at sunset sometimes puts on such a hue, or a fire at Christmas when it burns red as well as bright. The blossom was dazzling to look upon. It seemed as if there were light in the leaves, like that coloured lamp of a flower, the Oriental Poppy. Phoebus was not too glorious a name for that dahlia. The Golden-haired Apollo might be proud of such an emblem. It was worthy of the god of day; -a very Phoenix of floral beauty. Every dahlia-fancier who came into our garden, or who had an opportunity of seeing a bloom elsewhere; and, sooth to say, we were rather ostentatious in our display; John put it into stands, and jars, and baskets, and dishes; Dick stuck it into Dash's collar, his own button-hole, and Pearl's bridle; my father presented it to such lady visiters as he delighted to honour; and I, who have the habit of dangling a flower, generally a sweet one, caught myself more than once rejecting the spicy clove and the starry jessamine, the blossomed myrtle and the tuberose, my old fragrant favourites, for this scentless (but triumphant) beauty; everybody who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant or a cutting; and we, generous in our ostentation, willing to redeem the vice by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could reasonably imagine the root might be made to produce * perhaps rather more; and half the dahliagrowers round rejoiced over the glories of the gorgeous flower, and speculated, as the wont is now, upon seedling after seedling to the twentieth generation. Alas for the vanity of human expectations! February came, the twenty-second of February, the very St. Valentine of dahlias, when the roots which have been buried in the ground during the winter are disinterred, and placed in a hotbed to put forth their first shoots previous to the grand operations of potting and dividing them. Of course, the first object of search in the choicest corner of the nicely-labelled hoard, was the Phoebus: but no Phoebus was forthcoming; root and label had vanished bodily! There was, to be sure, a dahlia without a label, which we would gladly have transformed into the missing treasure; but, as we speedily discovered a label without a dahlia, it was but too obvious that they belonged to each other. Until last year we might have had plenty of the consolation which results from such divorces of the name from the thing; for our labels, sometimes written upon parchment, sometimes upon leather, sometimes upon wood, as each material happened to be recommended by gardening authorities, and fastened on with packthread, or whip-cord, or silk twist, had generally parted company from the roots, and frequently become utterly illegible, producing a state of confusion which most undoubtedly we never expected to regret: but this year we had followed the one perfect system of labels of unglazed china, highly varnished after writing on them, and fastened on by wire; and it had answered so completely, that one, and one only, had broken from its moorings. No hope could be gathered from that quarter. The Phoebus was gone. So much was clear; and our loss being fully ascertained, we all began, as the custom is, to divert our grief and exercise our ingenuity by different guesses as to the fate of the vanished treasure. My father, although certain that he had written the label, and wired the root, had his misgivings about the place in which it had *It is wonderful how many plants may, by dint of forcing, and cutting and forcing again, be extracted from one root. But the experiment is not always safe. Nature sometimes avenges herself for the encroachments of art, by weakening the progeny. The Napoleon Dahlia, for instance, the finest of last year's seedlings, being over-propagated, this season has hardly produced one perfect bloom, even in the hands of the most skilful cultivators. been deposited, and half suspected that it had slipt in amongst a basket which he had sent as a present to Ireland; I myself, judging from a similar accident which had once happened to a choice hyacinth bulb, partly thought that one or other of us might have put it for care and safety in some snug corner, that it would be six months before it turned up; John, impressed with a high notion of the moneyvalue of the property, and estimating it something as a keeper of the regalia might estimate the most precious of the crown jewels, boldly affirmed that it was stolen; and Dick, who had just had a démêlé with the cook, upon the score of her refusal to dress a beef-steak for a sick greyhound, asserted, between jest and earnest, that that hard-hearted official had either ignorantly or maliciously boiled the root for a Jerusalem artichoke, and that we, who stood lamenting over our regretted Phobus, had actually eaten it, dished up with white sauce. John turned pale at the thought. The beautiful story of the Falcon, in Boccaccio, which the young knight killed to regale his mistress, or the still more tragical history of Couci, who minced his rival's heart, and served it up to his wife, could not have affected him more deeply. We grieved over our lost dahlia, as if it had been a thing of life. Grieving, however, would not repair our loss; and we determined, as the only chance of becoming again possessed of this beautiful flower, to visit, as soon as the dahlia season began, all the celebrated collections in the neighbourhood, especially all those from which there was any chance of our having procured the root which had so mysteriously vanished. Early in September, I set forth on my voyage of discovery-my voyages, I ought to say; for every day I and my pony-phaeton made our way to whatever garden within our reach bore a sufficiently high character to be suspected of harbouring the good Dahlia Phoebus. Monday we called at Lady A.'s; Tuesday at General B.'s; Wednesday at Sir John C.'s; Thursday at Mrs. D.'s; Friday at Lord E.'s; and Saturday at Mrs. F.'s. We might as well have staid at home; not a Phœbus had they, or any thing like one. We then visited the nurseries, from Brown's, at Slough, a princely establishment, worthy of its regal neighbourhood, to the pretty rural gardens at South Warnborough, not forgetting our own most intelligent and obliging nurseryman, Mr. Sutton of Reading-(Belford Regis, I mean) whose collection of flowers of all sorts is amongst the most choice and select that I have ever known. Hundreds of magnificent blossoms did we see in our progress, but not the blossom we wanted. of the desired colour. Besides a score of There was no lack, heaven knows, of dahlias "Orange Perfections," bearing the names of their respective growers, we were introduced |
