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THE CHINA MAN IN

"Ah! I am always generous-I do n't do things by halves."

"What kindliness and grace! Mademoiselle, it is not this miserable collection I should offer you. I would I could place at your feet the pagoda of the suburb Vai lo ching, which is of porcelain, with tiles of massive gold!"

PARIS.

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"When will she return ?" asked I, with deathlike visage.

"After Easter or Christmas," answered the porter. As I came away I heard loud laughter in chorus from the whole family of porters.

No news of Mademoiselle de Saint Phar! Every night at the opera-but no danseuse. Her name no

"That would suit me exactly, particularly the longer appeared in the bills—it had disappeared from tiles!-Is my foot placed right?"

"My design is completed, Mademoiselle; my gratitude for your kindness will never end-may I call to-morrow to visit you?"

"To-morrow-dear doctor, to-morrow is an unlucky day! I dance to-morrow, and must practice for five hours."

"The day after, then?"

"The day after? that's Saturday-I always dine with my mother on Saturday-Sunday I shall be free as air. Suppose I take you to Versailles on Sunday? we can eat a bare at a country inn, and drink milk. You will accept my invitation will you not?-agreed then. Oh! how delighted I shall be to get into the fields and inhale the fragrance of the flowers. Sunday, then, dear doctor, my carriage shall be at your door at twelve o'clock; I am as exact as a Breguet watch-adieu!"

We have no women in China-it is the only thing our ancestors forgot to invent! If Mademoiselle Alexandrine were to appear at Pekin she would take the empire by storm! You can form no idea of that divine creature-graceful as a bird-speaking as melodiously as she sings-springing as she walksdoing a thousand delicious things in a moment, and throwing at you sweet and flashing glances, like the twinkling of a star.

the ballet as her person had from her hotel.

Could I abase my dignity as representative of the Celestial Empire by causing search to be made for a danseuse? What would the grand secretary for foreign affairs have said of me! I could only suffer in silence. So I did suffer—and hold my tongue.

Forty days after that fatal Sunday I was walking along a great street, whose name I forget, and having a habit of reading signs as I pass along, what was my astonishment to read the following:

"CITY OF PEKIN!" Chinese Curiosities at fix'd prices.

In taking a glance at the window, I recognized some of those I had formerly owned. So I stepped into the shop, resolved to repurchase them if the price were not too high. An involuntary exclamation escaped me! the shopkeeper was a young woman-in short, Mademoiselle Alexandrine de Saint Phar!

I was thunderstruck, and as immovable as one of my clay compatriots at my side: but the danseuse smiled charmingly, and without interrupting her embroidery work, she said with a sang froid sublime,

"Ah! good morning, dear doctor-you are very good to favor us so early with a visit-look around and see if you cannot find something here to your taste. Your god-daughter has the small-pox-she asks for her god-father every day-the dear little Dileri!"

In quitting my parlor, she left a void which made me nervous. It was necessary to do something not to fall a prey to melancholy. I hurried my servants to the four corners of the street for porters, and in about an hour my room was cleared-before dinner my beautiful danseuse had received every thing. What a sweet night I had! I had the copy of each foot in either hand! and I said to myself, at this moment she is blessing me-she praises my Mademoiselle cast a sidelong glance at me-shruggenerosity before the altar of Tien-in her eyes aged her shoulders, and biting off a scarlet thread with single man exists! and that is me!-for her the rest of the world has disappeared!

I crossed my arms upon my breast and shook my head-a pantomime which I have remarked in a drama at the Theatre Ambigu means "what infamy!"

her teeth, said

"By the bye, dear doctor, I am married now-I have been a wife fifteen days-Madame Telamon, at your service. I will introduce you to my husbanda very handsome man-you would scarcely reach to his waist even if you raised yourself upon your toes. Hold! here he is!"

With what impatience was Sunday expected-that Sunday which promised me such happiness! I wanted to break all the clocks about me, because they seemed joined in a conspiracy against me, to lengthen out Saturday! Notwithstanding my impatience the hours rolled round, and on Sunday, an age I saluted her hastily, and left the shop furiously after the clock struck eleven, it announced mid-day. angry, the more so that I was obliged to conceal my I stood in my balcony and devoured every carriage rage. A single glance I gave toward the husbandwith my eyes. At six o'clock I had seen all the car-real or false-sufficed for me to recognize the preriages in Paris roll by-and I was still alone! Alone! tended decorator at the opera, who came to my box when one has been promised a rendezvous! There to invite my judgment upon his Chinese kiosque. is in this deception the very delirium of despair! That I had been the victim of a regular con. As soon as it was proper I ran to visit Mademoi-spiracy was very evident-resignation was my only selle de St. Phar. The porter, hardly concealing a smile, said, "Mademoiselle de Saint Phar has gone to the country."

resource.

A fortnight afterward I assumed a disguise, and had the weakness to go and promenade before the

shop in the evening twilight, to catch a last glimpse | back upon me. My head burned like fire-my heart of the unworthy object of my idolatry.

The colossal husband was brushing the dust from a mandarin in porcelain, and I heard him murmur, "If that Doctor Sian Seng should attempt to set his foot inside my door again, I'll choke him, pack him in straw, and sell his carcass to the doctors for fifteen louis!"

Oh no! I shall never see this beautiful monster again; I have the resolution of a man and of a philosopher; I will fulfill my mission to the end, and will again make myself worthy of you, oh! holy city, which the silver moon illumines so caressingly when from the top of Mount Tyryathon she hangs like a lantern of silk from Nanking!

beat violently-my eyes glazed. The phantom of Mademoiselle Alexandrine danced before my eyes continually with fascinating grace, my ears were filled with her silvery voice-alas! I lived only in her!

"Physician cure thyself," has said the wise Menu -this thought suddenly occurred to me. Since the French doctors have forgotten to invent a cure for love, let us find a remedy; and we will give a Chinese name to this grand consolation for suffering Europe!

If I could live for a week without thinking of Mademoiselle Alexandrine I should be saved! It was impossible to remain in my lodgings, every thing there reminded me of her, the faithless one! Besides, solitude never cures the wounds of love, it only festers them. Visits to the country are still more dangerous. The streets, boulevards and theatres are filled with women, and the species too often reminds one of the individual traitress; still it is necessary to live a week in total forgetfulness of the ungrateful fair.

Fo has inspired me; let me render thanks to Fo! Paris is filled with monuments, many of them very high; I chose four from among them-the tower of Notre Dame, the Pantheon, the Column Vendôme and the tower of St. James; by the payment of a few sous, one is permitted to ascend these towers, which are kept by a tractable porter. I resolved to pass some days in going up and down the stairs of these monuments and towers without taking rest,

In Paris there are physicians who devote themselves entirely to specific diseases; there are some❘ who treat only infants at the breast; others, after weaning; others who prescribe only for those of sixty and above of it. Bills are stuck up at the corners of all the streets, and advertisements in the newspapers, proclaiming a thousand infallible receipts for the six hundred maladies which the celebrated Pi-ké has found to germinate in the human body. They have discovered amongst other curious things in physics, how to put a new nose upon faces unfortunately deprived of that ornament, and to elongate it when too short. They make teeth of ivory for old men—hair for the bald-legs for those who have lost them-eyes for the blind-tongues for the dumb-ears for the deaf-brains for fools-and have wonderful methods to resuscitate the dead. But they forgot to invent one remedy-a cure for dis-only, to vary the monotony of this continual ascent appointed love! In China we know nothing about love; that passion was first discovered in France, by a troubadour called Raymond-for five hundred years it has ravaged fearfully. It is estimated that eleven millions seven hundred and thirty-eight persons have fallen victims to it, through assassinations, languishing death, and suicide, caused by this scourge In my dreams I imagined that huge giants poised of the human race-that amounts to double the num- me in a swing, hung over the moon on a golden ber of victims of cholera in Asia since the reign of nail, and the fright I had in such an alarming position Aurengzebé. The French government have never drove the phantom of Alexandrine from the boundtaken any means to stop the progress of this epi-less space in which I undulated between the Pandemic, on the contrary, it pays largely toward the theon and the fixed stars! support, of four royal theatres, where they celebrate the power of love and another mortal disease called champagne. Mr. Scribe has made a fortune of five hundred thousand francs a year, by celebrating the delights of love and champagne for the governmental theatres.

In leaving the shop where my Chinoiseries were sold by Mademoiselle Alexandrine de Saint Phar, I had another violent attack of love; and you cannot imagine how I cursed that rascal Raymond. Having vented my rage where it was so well deserved, I began to think seriously about a cure, and I walked about the streets searching at every corner for some advertisement of a remedy; useless trouble! I went to the Hospital for Incurables, and asked the doctor there whether he had not some patient afflicted with this malady, so perfectly unknown in our harems; but he only shrugged his shoulders, and turned his

and descent, I jumped into a cabriolet occasionally at the Place Vendôme, drove to the Depôt of the Railroad to Versailles, and traversed the distance to that royal city five or six times, with my eyes shut. When evening came I returned home, and, after a slight repast, went to bed and slept soundly.

The eighth day the porters of the four towers closed their doors against me, saying that I would wear out their stairs! My cure not being complete, I took to the road to Versailles, and hiring a carriage by the day, drove first on one side of the river, and then on the other, for five days longer, with the most salutary fatigue-at the end of a fortnight my remedy triumphed.

In looking back upon my endless routine of dark stairs-of dreamy swingings-and the ceaseless rum. blings of my carriage, I perceived in the hazy distance the fleeting image of the false Alexandrine, and it appeared as if my passionate love were like the tale of a past age, or of an extinguished world! A single instant I was recalled to the sensible recollection of her. In looking over my cash, I observed the enormous void caused by the expenditure of the 3700 francs at Garbo & Gamboi's. The spirit of

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Chinese ingenuity and enterprise inspired me with a happy thought. I was upon the eve of recovering my lost francs! I inserted an advertisement in all the journals of the day, as follows:

RADICAL CURE FOR

DISAPPOINTED LOVE,

IN FIFTEEN DAYS?!!
Consult from 12 till 2 o'clock,
DOCTOR SIAN SENG,
Rue Neuve de Luxembourg.

No Cure, no Pay:

1 did not expect such success as attended me. What a city! what a people! How quickly do new opinions become popular!

The first day I had 300 visits for consultation at 20 francs each. The second I was obliged to seek at the Prefecture of Police four gend'arms as a protection! They took my office by assault. At length I hit upon a plan of giving advice to classes of twelve at a time, which in some measure reduced the crowd. The week following I gave public lectures at the Athenæum, at five francs the ticket. Mr. Lefort told me the fashion would not last long, and that I should "make hay while the sun shone"-a proverb Menu forgot to make!-besides, there was danger that the prefect of police would close the monuments. I therefore entered into a contract with the porter at the Tower of St. James, to receive all my patients who subscribed for a fortnight.

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The two trains to Versailles were filled with victims with closed eyes! I was told that if I would ask the minister for a patent, that he would probably grant me a pension-as they did to Mr. Daguerreof six thousand francs a year.

My best reward, however, I found in the unanimous gratitude of my relieved and happy patients; they wanted to strike a gold medal in my honor!— unheard of enthusiasm!

Five of my most inveterate cases, aged from twenty to fifty years, struck with an infatuation for the vaudeville, of which I relieved them, became great proselytes to my doctrines, and are determined to prosecute it on their own account after my departure-they even propose to purchase the Tower of St. James by subscription, and add two hundred more steps to the ascent.

Ti-en has given to the world no malady without its cure; he has placed the water-lily by the side of the pimento-the wood to make the sluice beside the torrent of Kiang-ho. It is for man to discover the remedy. Ti-en knows always what he does-and we-we do what we know not!

My mind is now calm; my heart is light, as is every thing which is empty. I shall now go and take my leave of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and endeavor to correct the errors in diplomacy I have made, since I have been possessed by the foot of Mademoiselle Alexandrine de Saint Phar! DOCTOR SIAN SENG.

"A true copy." MERY.

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WESTERN RECOLLECTIONS.

THE ILLINOIS RIVER AND THE OZARK MOUNTAINS.

BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.

EVERY one knows of the Illinois River emptying | a single glance would reveal to me, when lost in into the Mississippi at Alton, and of the fertile champagne country it waters. All are familiar with the traditions of the hardships undergone in its discovery by the good fathers Hennepin and Marquette; of the stirring wars of the Illinois, Potawatamie and Peoria Indians, and of the recollections of that cordon of military posts by which France united Detroit with the great point d'appui of Fort Chartres, built near where Trinity now stands, but of which scarcely a trace remains, except a portion of the curtain and bastions. These are the associations which rise in the mind of most persons at the word Illinois, which to me, however, is suggestive of another train of ideas. In a south-western direction from the point of confluence of the Gasconade and Missouri Rivers, extends a broad chain of mountains, of which little except the name Ozark is known. Many streams which elsewhere would be esteemed large rivers roll from its valleys northward into the Osage, and in a southern direction into the Arkansas. After crossing two-thirds of the state of Missouri, this ridge passes through the north-west county of the State of Arkansas, and thence reaches across the country of the Cherokees and Chactas far into Texas. Through the passes of this range many important rivers flow, among which are the Arkansas, Red and Canadienne. There is a striking peculiarity in this mountain range-that all the waters flowing from it, either northward or southward, are clear as crystal, while all the other streams of the country are foul and turbid. On one of these streams, the Neosho, stands the lonely post of Fort Gibson, and twenty miles below is another river called the Illinois. This is not a large stream, measuring certainly not more than a hundred miles, but is one of the most picturesque imaginable. Flowing between two ridges of the Ozark, it winds like a serpent around the bases of the mountains, which now tower in immensity, clad to their very summits with huge pines, or again gradually decrease in size until they spread into rich and luxuriant prairies. The road from Fort Gibson to Fayetteville, in Arkansas, is along this stream, which it crosses more than a dozen times, and thus enables the traveler to behold all the wonderful beauties of the scenery. Words cannot describe it adequately. I have often in fording the river, which may at many places be done without wetting the saddle-girths, looked up the bed. Smooth and transparent as glass, rolling over pebbles of silex and crystal, it looks like a band of silver beneath the arched boughs of the aspen and gigantic walnut trees, while the immediate banks were fringed by the long-leaved willow and cane. Not unfrequently

admiration at the quiet beauty of such a scene, an-
other of a far different yet equally pleasing style.
The current would quicken-small islets would ap-
pear, scarcely more than a rood in breadth, against
which the waters would leap and lash themselves
into fury. The current would quicken yet more, and
in the distance a rugged mountain would be seen.
Against the base of this the waters would rush and
whirl into eddies over the seething surface of which
wild-fowl almost constantly floated. The low grounds
on the river abounded with the sloe or scuppanon,
and at distances of every mile or two, natural vine-
yards, bearing a large, rich, luscious grape, without
a particle of the musky flavor which characterizes
almost all the American uva, were seen. So im-
mense were these vines that they ran from tree to
tree, masking every thing with their foliage, and dis-
playing their grand clusters over the barren limbs of
the stunted oak or hickory. I have called the
Illinois a beautiful river, and have spoken of the
lucidness of its water—I can give an illustration of
the latter which is most apropos. Several years
since I was stationed on the bank of this stream with
a small detachment of men, and without any other
officer. In the long August days, when the prairies
were burned, and scarcely a breath of air was to be
had in the forests, I used to while away many weary
hours upon the banks of the river either fishing or
bathing. One day I amused myself with an Indian
lance in killing the fine buffalo-fish, which I could see
distinctly in the translucent waters. I had posed my-
self on the bow of the boat in pursuit of one pecu-
liarly large fish which shot up the stream with the
rapidity of an arrow. The soldier who sat at the
stern of the boat, a very active and nervous man,
(he was killed, poor fellow, at the storming of Taos,
in New Mexico,) drove the boat after the quarry
with scarcely less rapidity. At last I had overtaken
him, the boat hung above him, like a gigantic leaf in
the atmosphere, which could scarcely be distinguished
from the water below. Poising myself, I drove the
lance into the fish, and a second afterward, to my
amazement, was floundering ten feet below the
surface of the water, and probably yet twenty from
the pebbly bottom. I would have sworn the water
was not more than four feet deep, and scrambled
out I know not how, for I could never swim-not,
however, until I had upset the boat and made poor
Orndorf a sharer in my calamity. The clearness of
the water, surpassing any thing I have ever seen, is
only approached by the one spring near Fort Fanning,
in Florida, upon which so much inquiry has been
expended. I would myself pronounce it the famous

WESTERN

RECOLLECTIONS.

179

fountain of health for which De Leon sought so long, | mediate bank of the river, and the mountains seem were it not that every human being who drinks of masses of pebbles similar in character to those over its transparent waters, unless craftily qualified, dies which the river runs. Strangely enough gigantic with that most loathsome of all diseases, the ague pines grow upon the mountains, the dark foliage of and fever. which, seen even in the sunlight, looks, compared with that of other trees, like the shadows cast by what Schiller calls

Fliegende Wolken, Segler des Luft,

over the earth during a windy day of March. The table-land, however, at the top of what I may call the secondary hills, is covered with what are called

The first white man who ever trod in the valleys of the Ozark was the famous Fernando de Soto. About the year 1539 or 1540, this gallant soldier, capitan-general of Florida, and a marquis, made a voyage to his commandery, for the purpose of conquering it. Sailing from Havana he landed at the bay of the Holy Spirit, now called Tampa, Hills-black-jacks, the ugliest and most ungainly of all borough, Honda, etc., and occupied an Indian village not far from the mouth of the Manittee River, and just opposite the present post of Fort Brooke. The old ruins are still visible there, and the trace of an aqueduct or canal which appears at some distant day to have connected the waters of the great interior lakes with the gulf. People say the ruins are the remnant of an old Spanish fort; but half a glance will satisfy apy one that all the Spanish troops ever in North America could not have constructed that aqueduct, which to all appearance is old as the city of Seville. The ruins belonged evidently to some older race, and are very curious though they have nothing to do

with De Soto.

De Soto marched through Florida across the country of Apalache Indians, with whom he had a fight, across the Mississippi toward Mexico. De Soto, first of Europeans, saw the Mississippi, and crossed it somewhere near Memphis, if the account given by old Biedma, his historian, of topography be true. Thence he now passed through the now State of Arkansas, crossing the Ozark Ridge, passing over the Red River, and marching along the false Wachita until he came to the famous Rio Grande, since famous for the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and celebrated by the Mexican poet,* Ho Axe de Saltillo. De Soto did not reach New Spain, but was forced to retrace his steps, died, and was thrown by his soldiers into the Mississippi, to prevent the natives from mutilating his remains. It was a fitting tomb for so great a man. Any one who wishes to read all the items of this great march may find them in old Biedma's strange book, in the vidas de los Conquistadores, or as those books are somewhat rare, in the Compendium of Discoveries until 1573, by Conway Robinson, Esq, of Richmond, Va., a person who devotes himself for amusement and relaxation to digging out the gems of strange old books most persons would think it hard work to read.

things on the surface of the earth, not excepting the Mexican cactus, which is like no other thing animal or vegetable, except the porcupine. The hills seem vast masses of limestone, with the granite occasionally showing itself. I have no doubt of the richness of the soil in mineral wealth, copper being everywhere apparent, and the Ozark Mountains evidently connecting themselves with the Sierra Madre and Cordillera of Mexico. Some day the gold-hunter will deform this beautiful land, the vast groves and of timber which crown its mountains will fall. Worse than all, the picturesque Illinois will be deformed and forced to pass through some series of plank troughs in the gold-washing establishment of Messrs. Jones, Smith & Co.

In 1837 these mountains were uninhabited. One

road wound among the intricacies of the mountains between Fort Gibson and the village of Fayetteville. After leaving the Methodist Mission of Prospect Hill smoke was scarcely seen by the traveler until he had entered the limits of Arkansas. There were a few hunting and bridle-paths, leading in a direction parallel to the road, which were frequented exclusively by the smugglers engaged in the nefarious business of selling whiskey to the Indians. Since then a mighty change has taken place. On the removal of the Cherokee Indians west, the North Carolina band selected these hills as most like their old homes and established themselves among them. Hamlets grew up in the valleys and farms were opened; so that in a short time the intelligent Cherokee citizens, second to no agricultural class in the world, followed in their train, and large plantations were opened. One of these colonists, the well-known chief, Bushy head, has a magnificent estate comprising a prairie and grove of about one thousand acres, which has none to surpass it in the country. A wooded knoll rises at the back of his house, to the heighth of about 250 feet, and on a calm summer-day the ripple of the Illinois may be heard in the distance through the forests and green corn-fields. The writer has often partaken of his hospitality, and has been a witness of the prosperity and happiness of his whole household, Indian and Negro, (he has many slaves.) This happiness would be without alloy but that the Indian always knows he is but a tenant at

De Soto first looked on these Ozark Mountains and a weary time his men-at-arms, in coats of mail and chain armor, must have had to climb them. They were then, as they were until very recently, uninhabited, and the home of all kinds of wild beasts known on the continent. The black bear, the cougar, catamount, deer and elk, were found among its ravines and the glades at their foot, and even now old beaver-will of the soil he stands upon, and looks back, perdams attest the existence of those bestial republicans on almost all the minor streams which run into the Illinois. The land is barren, except upon the im*C. F. Hoffman, of New York.

haps with regret, to the days when his forefathers wandered in savage independence on the shores of the Atlantic. On the other side of the Neosho River the mountains are higher and wilder, and even now

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