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THE WIDOW'S DOG.

ONE of the most beautiful spots in the north of Hampshire-a part of the country which, from its winding green lanes, with the trees meeting overhead like a cradle, its winding roads between coppices, with wide turfy margents on either side, as if left on purpose for the picturesque and frequent gipsy camp, its abundance of hedge-row timber, and its extensive tracts of woodland, seems as if the fields were just dug out of the forest, as might have happened in the days of William Rufus-one of the loveliest scenes in this lovely county is the Great Pond at Ashley End.

It was a small clear lake almost embosomed in trees, across which an embankment, formed for the purpose of a decoy for the wildfowl with which it abounded, led into a wood which covered the opposite hill; an old forest-like wood, where the noble oaks, whose boughs almost dipped into the water, were surrounded by their sylvan accompaniments of birch, and holly, and hawthorn, where the tall trees met over the straggling paths, and waved across the grassy dells and turfy brakes with which it was interspersed. One low-browed cottage stood in a little meadow-it might almost be called a little orchard-just at the bottom of the winding road that led to the Great Pond: the cottage of the widow King.

Independently of its beautiful situation, there was much that was at once picturesque and comfortable about the cottage itself, with its irregularity of outline, its gable-ends and jutting-out chimneys, its thatched roof and pent-house windows. A little yard, with a small building which just held an old donkeychaise and an old donkey, a still older cow, and a few pens for geese and chickens, lay on one side of the house; in front, a flower court, surrounded by a mossy paling; a larger plot for vegetables behind; and, stretching down to the Great Pond on the side opposite the yard, was the greenest of all possible meadows, which, as I have before said, two noble walnut and mulberry trees, and a few aged pears and apples, clustered near the dwelling, almost converted into that pleasantest appanage of country life, an orchard.

Ashley End is itself a romantic and beautiful village, straggling down a steep hill to a clear and narrow running stream, which crosses the road in the bottom, crossed in its turn by a picturesque wooden bridge, and then winding with equal abruptness up the opposite acclivity, so that the scattered cottages, separated from each other by long strips of garden ground, the little country inn, and two or three old-fashioned tenements of somewhat higher pretensions, surrounded by their own mossgrown orchards, seemed to be completely shut out from this bustling world, buried in the sloping meadows so deeply green, and the hanging woods so rich in their various tinting, along which the slender wreaths of smoke from the old clustered chimneys went smiling peacefully in the pleasant autumn air. So profound was the tranquillity, that the slender streamlet which gushed along the valley, following its natural windings, and glittering in the noonday sun like a thread of silver, seemed to the unfrequent visiters of that remote hamlet the only trace of life and motion in the pic-nations, roses, pinks; and in spite of the cot

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Notwithstanding, however, the exceeding neatness of the flower-court, and the little garden filled with beds of strawberries, and lavender, and old-fashioned flowers, stocks, car

This little flower, that loves the lea,
May well my simple emblem be;
It drinks heaven's dew as blithe as rose
That in the King's own garden grows,
And when I place it in my hair,
Allan, a bard, is bound to swear
He ne'er saw coronet so fair."

Still greater was the delight with which another American recognised that blossom of a thousand asspeare-the English primrose. He bent his knee to the ground in gathering a bunch, with a reverential expression which I shall not easily forget, as if the by whom it has been consecrated to fame; and he flower were to him an embodiment of the great poets also had the good taste not to be ashamed of his own enthusiasm. I have had the pleasure of exporting, this spring, to my friend Miss Sedgwick, (to whose family one of my visiters belongs,) roots and seeds of these wild flowers, of the common violet, the cowslip, and the ivy, another of our indigenous plants which Theodore Sedgwick was especially delighted. It will our Transatlantic brethren want, and with which Mr.

sociations- -the flower sacred to Milton and Shak

be a real distinction to be the introductress of these plants into that Berkshire village of New England, where Miss Sedgwick, surrounded by relatives worthy of her in talent and in character, passes her sum

mers.

tage itself being not only always covered with climbing shrubs, woodbine, jessamine, clematis, and musk-roses, and in one southern nook a magnificent tree-like fuchsia, but the old chimney, actually garlanded with delicate creepers, the maurandia, and the lotus spermus, whose pink and purple bells, peeping out from between their elegant foliage, and mingling with the bolder blossoms and darker leaves of the passion-flower, give such a wreathy and airy grace to the humblest building;* in spite of this luxuriance of natural beauty, and of the evident care bestowed upon the cultivation of the beds, and the training of the climbing plants, we yet felt, we could hardly tell why, but yet we instinctively felt, that the mossgrown thatch, the mouldering paling, the hoary apple-trees, in a word, the evidences of decay visible around the place, were but types of the fading fortunes of the inmates.

And such was really the case. The widow King had known better days. Her husband had been the head keeper, her only son head gardener, of the lord of the manor; but both were dead; and she, with an orphan grand child, a thoughtful boy of eight or nine years old, now gained a scanty subsistence from the produce of their little dairy, their few poultry, their honey, (have I not said that a row of bee-hives held their station on the sunny side of the garden?) and the fruit and flowers which little Tom and the old donkey carried in their season to Belford every market-day.

Besides these, their accustomed sources of income, Mrs. King and Tom neglected no means of earning an honest penny. They stripped the downy spikes of the bulrushes to stuff cushions and pillows, and wove the rushes themselves into mats. Poor Tom was as handy as a girl; and in the long winter evenings he would plait the straw hats in which he went to Belford market, and knit the stockings, which, kept rather for show than for use, were just assumed to go to church on Sundays, and then laid aside for the week. So exact was their economy.

The only extravagance in which Mrs. King indulged herself was keeping a pet spaniel, the descendant of a breed for which her husband had been famous, and which was so great a favourite, that it ranked next to Tom in her affections, and next to his grandmother in Tom's. The first time that I ever saw them, this pretty dog had brought her kind mistress into no small trouble.

We had been taking a drive through these beautiful lanes, never more beautiful than when the richly tinted autumnal foliage contrasts with the deep emerald hue of the autumnal herbage, and were admiring the fine effect of the majestic oaks, whose lower branches almost touched the clear water which reflected so brightly the bright blue sky, when Mrs. King, who was well known to my father, advanced to the gate of her little court, and modestly requested to speak with him.

The group in front of the cottage was one which it was impossible to contemplate without strong interest. The poor widow, in her neat crimped cap, her well-worn mourning gown, her apron and handkerchief, coarse, indeed, and of cheap material, but delicately clean, her grey hair parted on her brow, and her pale intelligent countenance, stood leaning against the doorway, holding in one thin trembling hand a letter newly opened, and in the other her spectacles, which she had been fain to take off, half hoping that they had played her false, and that the ill-omened epistle would not be found to contain what had so grieved her. Tom, a fine rosy boy, stout and manly for his years, sat on the ground with Chloe in his arms, giving vent to a most unmanly fit of crying; and Chloe, a dog worthy of Edwin Landseer's pencil, a large and beautiful spaniel, of the scarce old English breed, brown and white, with shining wavy hair feathering her thighs and legs, and clustering into curls towards her tail and forehead, and upon the long glossy magnificent ears which gave so much richness to her fine expressive countenance, looked at him wistfully, with eyes that expressed the fullest sympathy in his affliction, and stooped to lick his hand, and nestled her head in his bosom, as if trying, as far as her caresses had the power, to soothe and comfort him.

*I know nothing so pretty as the manner in which creeping plants interwreath themselves one with another. We have at this moment a wall quite covered with honeysuckles, fuchsias, roses, clematis, passionflowers, myrtles, scobæa, acrima carpis, lotus spermus, and maurandia Barclayana, in which two long sprays "And so, sir," continued Mrs. King, who of the last-mentioned climbers have jutted out from had been telling her little story to my father, the wall, and entwined themselves together like the handle of an antique basket. The rich profusion of whilst I had been admiring her pet, "this Mr. leaves, those of the lotus spermus, comparatively Poulton, the tax-gatherer, because I refused to rounded and dim, soft in texture and colour, with a give him our Chloe, whom my boy is so fond darker patch in the middle, like the leaf of the old of that he shares his meals with her, poor felgum geranium; those of the maurandia, so bright, and low, has laid an information against us for shining, and sharply outlined the stalks equally graceful in their varied green, and the roseate bells keeping a sporting dog-I don't know what of the one contrasting and harmonizing so finely with the proper word is-and has had us surchargthe rich violet flowers of the other, might really formed; and the first that I ever heard of it is a study for a painter. I never saw anything more graceful in quaint and cunning art than this bit of simple nature. But nature often takes a fancy to outvie her skilful and ambitious handmaiden, and is always certain to succeed in the competition.

by this letter, from which I find that I must pay I don't know how much money by Saturday next, or else my goods will be seized and sold. And I have but just managed to pay

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"But I can't give her to him. Don't cry 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."

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.

"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. Howtain that he would have no great taste for a 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.

"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.

66

About a week after, Tom and Chloe, in their turn, appeared at our cottage. All had gone right in the matter of the surcharge. The commissioners had decided in Mrs. King's favour, and Mr. Poulton had been forced to succumb. But the grandmother had consider

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 cer

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, I suppose, bore to Sebastian. But upon being reminded of the affinity between the two dogs, (for Dash came originally from Ashley End kennel, and was, as nearly as we could make out, granduncle to Chloe,) and of our singular good fortune in having two such beautiful

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 to Mrs. King, when a letter from a friend at Bath, gave a new aspect to Chloe's affairs.

The letter was from a dear friend of minea young married lady, with an invalid husband, and one lovely little girl, a damsel of some two years old, commonly called "Pretty May." They wanted a pet dog to live in the parlour, and walk out with mother and daughter-not a cross yelping Blenheim spaniel, (those troublesome little creatures spoil everybody's manners who is so unlucky as to possess them, the first five minutes of every morning call being invariably devoted to silencing the lapdog and apologising to the visiter,)-not a pigmy Blenheim, but a large noble animal, something, in short, as like as might be to Dash, with whom Mrs. Keating had a personal acquaintance, and for whom, in common with most of his acquaintances, she entertained a very decided partiality: I do not believe that there is a dog in England who has more friends than my Dash. A spaniel was wanted at Bath like my Dash: and what spaniel could be more like Dash than Chloe?

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 fáther 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.

As her new dog had been Pretty May's last thought at night, so was it her first on awakening. He shared her breakfast as he had shared her supper; and immediately after breakfast, mother and daughter, attended by nursery-maid and footman, sallied forth to provide proper luxuries for Chloe's accommodation. First they purchased a sheepskin rug; then a splendid porcelain trough for water, and a porcelain dish to match, for food; then a spaniel basket, duly lined, and stuffed, and curtained-a splendid piece of canine upholstery; then a necklace-like collar with silver bells, which was left to have the address engraved upon the clasp; and then May, finding herself in the vicinity of a hosier and a shoemaker, bethought herself of a want which undoubtedly had not occurred to any other of her party, and holding up her own pretty little foot, demanded "tilk tocks and boo thoose for Tloë."

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 disappear- done for that boy-he's a fine spanking feled. Great was the consternation in Camden low. We must consult his grandmother. Place. Pretty May cried as she had never The descendant of two faithful servants has been known to cry before; and papa, mamma, an hereditary claim to all that can be done for grandmammas, aunts, nursery and house- him. How could you imagine that I should maids, fretted and wondered, wondered and be thinking of these coverts?-I, that am as fretted, and vented their distress in every va- great a dog-lover as Dame King herself! I riety of exclamation, from the refined language have a great mind to be very angry with you." of the drawing-room to the patois of a Somer- These words, spoken in the good sportssetshire kitchen. Rewards were offered, and man's earnest, hearty, joyous, kindly voice, handbills dispersed over the town. She was (that ought to have given an assurance of his cried, and she was advertised; and at last, kindly nature,-I have a religious faith in giving up every hope of her recovery, Mrs. voices,) these words brought us within sight Keating wrote to me. 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 kissing Tom's honest face, who broke into 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.

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 hawthorn 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 persuaIsion, 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

66

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 unfor tunate self.

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