broader and happier significance, when on Bunker Hill the representatives of several Southern States grasped the proffered hands of men of New England in sincere amity, and confessed, as men gathered about an altar, that the blood of Bunker Hill, of Eutaw, and

QUINCY MANSION, QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS.

hour, than statesmanship with its wisdom | perhaps, wonder could lead any man into a could have secured in years. After this who shall say that history is not a power?

Granite may be, as some affirm, typical of New England character, hard, inflexible, and insusceptible to polish; but it is strong, mas

train of speculative philosophy, where else but in Quincy can you find the houses of two Presidents of the United States?

Readers of the JOURNAL have hitherto followed my rambling up and down this quiet

and restful old town.* We have been admitted within the sacred precincts of more than one historic mansion, have held mystical converse with their departed inhabitants, and have, in turning away, mused on the lessons of their lives. There is much in these associations which, if we are not quite able to analyze, we yet feel the full force of. Stupid people may laugh, if they please, and accuse us of a sickly sentimentality, but we feel that it is good for us to cultivate a sentiment that leads us to honor the memory of the great and good who have lived before us.

Close by the sea, where you can scent its full flavor and inhale its invigorating gales, is the ancient Quincy Mansion-less antique, perhaps, than other roofs scattered about the town, but a good specimen of colonial architecture a hundred years ago. It is placed on a gentle swell of ground at the extremity of the noblest private estate in New England. Its five hundred broad acres of meadow and woodland give the idea that you have suddenly dropped into an English park come down since the Conquest by entail. A broad and leafy avenue a quarter of a mile long leads from the high-road to the mansion. There are delicious glimpses of the sea, of Boston Harbor and its islands, and of the countless white sails continually winging their way into port.

The house was built in 1770, by Colonel Josiah Quincy, of Braintree, on ground purchased of the local Indiau sagamore, as early as 1635, by Edmund Quincy, of England. The estate has ever since remained unalienated.

When I happened to be rambling in the neighborhood, I found hospitable welcome at the old mansion from the daughters of Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College. In four successive generations a son has borne the name of Josiah, and, as two of the Quincys were mayors of Boston, while all of them have been more or less distinguished in political life, the patronymic becomes a little perplexing. Beyond question, there may be, to a genealogist at least, many good arguments against the continued use of the same Christian name by a family.

When I was fairly within the house, which is furnished as houses were furnished a century ago where antique-dressed portraits looked down from the walls, and where sedan-chairs in cool corridors invited to postprandial naps-I felt that modern life had little right to intrude itself into such a place. Every visitor, I would suggest, should be required to don a powdered periwig, laced coat, and silk stockings, in order that the prevailing idea may not be disturbed. The fragrance of the old life and manners still lingered about those wainscoted apartments, and a half-hour's visit converted the imaginary into the real.

How quaint are those entries in John Adams's diary: "Drank tea at Grandfather Quincy's," or, "Spent the evening at Colonel Quincy's with Colonel Lincoln!" The men

*See JOURNALS of April 25, and September 26, 1874.

+ Braintree was the ancient name of Quincy. It was incorporated under its present name in honor of the Quincy family, 1792.

talked politics, and the ladies talked about the fashions by the last London packet. Both the Adamses, father and son, frequented this house. Here Hull after destroying the Guerrière, and here Decatur, were entertained.

The four Quincys who bore the name of Josiah should not be confounded the one with the other. Colonel Josiah Quincy, who built this house, and occupied it during Washington's investment of Boston, is easily identified by his military title. He used to ride to camp with projects to drive the British fleet to sea or sink it to the bottom of the harbor. He scratched on the window-pane with a diamond the date when that fleet finally stood out of the bay under a press of sail, while the Continental drums were beating "Yankee Doodle" in Boston streets. The grim satisfaction with which the old colonel watched the enemy's ships was dashed with bitterness: for one son was an exiled royalist, and of course his father's political enemy. The name of this son, however, was Samuel, and not Josiah.

which the Boston of his day was remarkable. Mr. Cotting and Mr. Quincy prostrated old-fogydom with the magical word "Progress."

Mr. Quincy was a representative in Congress during the exciting sessions of the War of 1812. He was, as his constituents expected, a strong anti-war man, and made some pretty incisive speeches against Mr. Madison's war policy. A man of his pronounced character very soon exasperated the fire-eating portion of the lower chamber, and it is said he once narrowly missed having a duel on his hands. He became the subject of party caricature, and was openly denounced as a British partisan.

After serving as the second Mayor of Boston, Mr. Quincy became, in 1829, President of Harvard University. In executive ability, and in the short, sharp, and decisive method of dealing with questions perplexing or difficult, there could scarcely be a greater contrast than between Josiah Quincy and Edward Everett, his successor. If a trifle despotic, the former was able to control elements of discord which overwhelmed the latter. If the students found a master in Mr. Quincy, the college also found a benefactor. He never touched any thing upon which he did not leave a permanent record of himself. Gore Hall, the beautiful depository of the library, was his work.

Colonel Quincy had another son, the Josiah Quincy, Jr., of the early Revolutionary period, whose memoirs, first written by his son Josiah, have lately been revised by his granddaughter, Eliza Susan Quincy, in a manner every way worthy the subject. Josiah Quincy, Jr., as he is still styled, from havind died in the lifetime of his father, had a great mind imprisoned in a feeble body. He The fourth Josiah Quincy, who is now liv. was admitted to the bar in 1766, when bar-ing, also became Mayor of Boston. It was meetings were held in the coffee-houses, and the barristers took punch or flip while questioning a candidate. It provokes a smile to note how John Adams groans in spirit at the admission of Quincy and other young men into a profession he then thought to be overcrowded.

Young Quincy espoused the patriot cause with the zeal of an ardent spirit and the eloquence of an orator by birth. His voice rang through the aisles of the Old South Meeting-house, which the land-speculators want to pull down and the nation wishes to keep untouched. In 1774 Mr. Quincy was in London, and wrote to his friend Joseph Reed, of Philadelphia: "My heart is with you, and, wherever my countrymen command, my person shall be also." While in London, Josiah Quincy, Jr., with his friend Franklin, had the honor of being distinguished by the censure of Lord Hillsborough, who said in the House of Lords that there were three men walking in the streets of London who ought to be in Newgate or Tyburn. While returning from England the gifted and patriotic Quincy died within sight of his native shores. Mrs. Sigourney dedicated some impassioned lines to his memory.

Nothing is easier than to write the biography of the third Josiah Quincy. Wherever you walk in Boston you are certain to meet

during his incumbency that the Cochituate water replaced the irregular and insufficient supplies from the Jamaica-Pond Aqueduct or the old town-pumps or wells. At the age of seventy-three Mr. Quincy still takes an active interest in whatever affects the prosperity of Boston. Another son of President Quincy, Edmund, is widely known as a political and miscellaneous author. His memoir of his father is a fitting supplement to the work mentioned, as written by that father in memory of a parent. Miss E. S. Quincy, sister of Edmund, is also an authoress, having, in addition to the revision of the memoir of her grandfather, assisted her father in his compilation of the valuable "History of Harvard University," and in 1861 prepared, for private distribution, the memoir of her mothera most interesting book of personal reminis cence. A nephew of President Quincy performed a soldier's part in the Civil War of 1861, and has of late been usefully associated with the government of his native city.

SAMUEL A. DRrake.

A MASTER-STROKE OF BUSINESS.

V.

HE lobbies, corridors, and verandas of

with evidences of the breadth and genius of the West End had become suddenly an

his enterprises, and the vigor of his execution of them. The Quincy Market-house and the long ranges of granite warehouses standing on land that he reclaimed from the filthy basins into which the tide had flowed, are among his monuments; and he deserves unstinted praise, the more, for having met and overcome the full power of that vis inertia for

excited stock-market. The men of the street crowded each other in every nook, discussing the sudden jump in stocks and the great corner in North Atlantic. Sharp voices were raised in the discussion in tones more like anger than business, but there were no physical encounters more serious than that of rib

and elbow as the excited crowd worked in and out. The click of the telegraph-instrument was heard continually in one corner, and the crowd, choosing this as the scene of greatest interest, encroached upon the table and leaned over the operator. A book-stand adjoining had also been appropriated, and the men of the street had ensconced themselves behind it among magazines, and dimenovels, and unsold dailies. Above the telegraph-operator was a bulletin-board, on which the stock quotations, forwarded by the telegraphic stock-indicator, were written from time to time by the operator's messengerboy-a proceeding that was always marked by a profound silence in the crowd as the figures began, and by an unwontedly noisy discussion as they closed. Along that portion of the veranda near the main hall, or office, equally excited crowds were gathered, and quiet agitations were even in progress on the grassy plots and graveled walks in front.

Esmond had strolled several times around the veranda before he had become aware of the excited state of the crowd. His own romantic thoughts had been unreasonably busy amid this Babel-mart. He was trying to take a loyal sense of pleasure in the weird picture which he had drawn of his unknown Nora, and it was with a feeling half of resentment that he found his thoughts intent rather upon Nelly. It seemed a sacrilegious invasion of the rights of romance that Nora should not occupy the sole thought of his heart. Do not think, gentle reader, that Mr. Drury's tenderness was of an exaggerated kind. The world will always cling to those who owe it gratitude. There arises a vague sense of being a grand hero in the eyes of one whom we have saved from imminent peril which average human nature will not complacently forego, and the love outgrowing from so romantic a beginning seems removed to a higher and more delicious plane than that of more commonplace origin. To replace his romantic passion for the unknown by a plain matter-of-fact love for another, about which clung none of the glamour of this grateful worship, seemed likely to be the fate of even so romantic a lover as Esmond, and it was therefore with a feeling partly of regret and partly of resentment that he found his heart tending so prosaically to thoughts of some one else than his phantom Nora.

With these thoughts occupying his mind the discussions on the veranda had but little interest for him. He met one or two friends who began the jargon of the Stock Exchange, but he had been born with an antipathy for that language, and he avoided long conversation with them. The crowd increased so steadily that it became plain to him at last that some sensation had occurred in the market, but, when the desultory conversation of those about him revealed that it was a corner in North Atlantic, he was content to inquire no further. There were knots of ladies assembled here and there on the piazzas in front of the ladies' parlors, but there were few men with them, business proving stronger than gallantry. The band was playing very sweetly at an open window, and a few young girls were whirling one another around

in the listless circles of the waltz on the ballroom floor, and several elderly ladies sat rigidly against the wall, like silent venders of the ware they exhibited on the carpet.

Esmond strolled along the veranda leisurely, hoping to see the Misses Darcy, but he saw them not in the few promenaders whom he met, and it was not until he had reached a far corner of the piazza, where the great mass seldom strayed, and where the noise of the stock contention had not reached, that he found them. The cavaliers had deserted even them for the stirring strife about the bulletin-board, and they sat alone, with their India shawls about them, in the shadow of one of the huge columns of the veranda.

"Here is Mr. Drury!" cried Mamie, as he emerged from the numerous shadows of the piazza, and the broad moonlight just rising beyond the sea struck full on his face. And the impulsive girl sprang from her campchair, and, rushing to him, grasped him by the band with a remarkably unfashionable heartiness that for a moment startled Esmond. "Here are Nelly and I," she said, "without an escort-completely deserted for the more fascinating stocks, and your apparition is a vision of joy."

"Can it be possible that watering-place beaux are so dull?" he said, lightly.

"Watering-place beaux that are in stocks," replied Mamie, leading him to the little circle of camp-chairs that surrounded Nelly, are beasts."

"Bulls and bears," said Esmond, laughingly, as he bowed to Miss Darcy, and took a "And they are very rampant just now in the lobby."

seat.

"Are they speculating even here?" asked Nelly, anxiously, with a glance toward Mamie.

"Yes, even here, where it is popularly supposed they came for pleasure," replied Esmond. "I am convinced that pleasure for some men is a myth."

"He knows everybody and can tell all about them," continued Mamie, "what they were and who they are, how long since their mother retired from the grocery business, and when their father failed in stocks, and which of their brothers is fast, and how many of the young ladies of the family eloped to get married. Oh, he's a treasure! I advise you, if you want to find out who anybody is, inquire of Mr. Roseblossom."

'Really, he's a very valuable acquaintance," replied Esmond, dryly. "I suppose I'll have to inquire of him who my unknown Nora is?"

A sudden silence fell on the gleeful sisters, and Mamie nervously twitched her chair nearer to Nelly's.

"Don't you know who your unknown Nora is?" asked Mamie, presently, in a voice that sounded slightly tremulous even to Esmond's uncritical ears.

"I haven't the remotest idea," he said, carelessly, "except that she's short and dark -and is called Nora."

"Short?" said Mamie, in such unmistakable astonishment that Esmond turned his bead sharply in her direction.

"Yes," said he, "short, petite rather, and dark ! ”

"Petite and dark!" echoed Mamie, with continued astonishment. "Why, that is not the Nora that I know!"

"Ah, then you know a Nora?" said Esmond, eagerly" a Nora, probably, that may prove to be my Nora? Come, tell me of her!"

The impulsive Mamie was upon the point of bursting upon Esmond with a flood of gratitude, and telling him all. But a sharp pressure of the hand of the cooler Nelly restrained her. A strong sense of propriety urged both the young ladies to preserve the secret from Esmond. His frequently - expressed interest in the unknown whom he had rescued, his hearty expression of a hope to meet her again and to pursue the acquaint"I know it is for papa," said Nelly. "He ance, the very fact that he had seen Nelly cannot enjoy himself in any other way than and not recognized her as the heroine of his by discussing stocks, even after he gets home romance, and, more than all, the perturbing from that horrid stock-exchange." intimations of their father as to Mr. Drury's "That is what you would call being liter- eligibility, all combined to impress upon them ally in stocks." the impropriety of admitting now Nelly's identity with Nora. Mamie's impulsive temperament and hearty sense of gratitude toward Esmond had almost carried her beyond these barriers, and the pressure of Nelly's hand came just in time. But she had hesitated, and Esmond was convinced that she knew something of his Nora.

"Yes," said Mamie, "and I think papa's stocks are as severe a punishment as the stocks down in Delaware."

"When we consider the matter," said Esmond, philosophically, "shop and shoptalk are naturally,more engaging to a true business man than any ordinary subjects. Household matters are to him unknown, and dress, and balls, and parties, and operas, do not interest him."

"Mamie," said Nelly, slyly, "I think Mr. Drury ought to know our friend Mr. Roseblossom."

Mamie responded with a hearty laugh. "Yes," she said, "you should know him by all means, Mr. Drury. He is my especial beau, 'special beau for all of us, in fact. He can talk of matters that are near and dear to our hearts, and he's a thorough businessman, too-the most delightful shop-walker you ever saw!"

"Tell me of your Nora," he repeated, turning about on his camp-stool to question more closely the faces of the two girls. Those faces had become flushed and pale by turns in the short interval of his quick questioning, but the cold, grayish light of the moon just tipping the distant breakers gave him no sign. "Is it not my Nora?" Mamie coughed.

"I almost think it is," she said.
"Then tell me who she is!"

"I must really find out first if it is the same person."

"But surely there can be no mistake.

Esmond had to join in the hearty laugh Noras are not rescued from drowning in vast that accompanied this sketch.

numbers every day, nor are they so plentiful

"It's nothing, dear."

Then he heard a low, startled wail as Mamie sank upon her knees at Nelly's chair: "Nora, dear Nora, what is it?" Esmond stopped for an instant. Then he strode along again, half bewildered, but with his head in the clouds. The same voice, the same words, the same name, that he had heard appealing from the sea.

VII.

THE miniature stock-exchange was still at its busy height as he passed into the lobby. He sent a hall-boy with a glass of water to the two young ladies on the front-piazza, rightly deeming that it was best to relieve them of his presence for at least a moment. He met one of his stock-broking friends near the clerk's desk-one whom he had found a consummate bore two days before, with his eternal Erie, Northern Kamtchatka, Central Eutopia, and other shuttlecocks of the mart. But now an unaccountable elation animated Esmond, and he glowed with an effusive feeling of affection and kindliness toward all mankind. And in that spirit of brotherly tenderness his eye brightened with delight even at seeing the bore.

"Well, Sharpless," he said, "you are having a lively session here."

"Yes. What are your private advices tonight?"

"Mine? Haven't any! Haven't got a single stock on the list.”

"The devil you haven't!" replied young Sharpless. Then suddenly he assumed the jocose, confidential air, and, running his cane into Esmond's button-hole, half whispered, "Should think the old man might a' put you up to a thing or two!"

"The old man!" said Esmond, blankly. "Ye-es! Your governor, you know. Damme, he knows the market for two weeks to come."

"Oh! my governor. Yes. I understand." "He got on to old Darcy hard, eh? buying them thirty-odd thousand of N. A. from him at 93%, when everybody thought they were going to the devil in the general smash. Hefty, that, don't you think so?"

terly. "To be in old Capsheaf's confidence, and bet heavily on a certainty, is quite an assurance of fame, I see!"

"I wouldn't have to wear my traveling-warmed Darcy on N. A.," thought Drury, bitduster for an overcoat next winter if I'd had my nip at that little game, you can bet! But come, now," he said, suddenly, putting his mouth close to Esmond's ear, "what points have you got? Capsheaf and your dad are hand-and-glove in the corner, and you must have heard how N. A. is going to-morrow." "No, sir," said Esmond, quite coolly. "I have not heard, and have no points."

He quietly shook himself free of the grasp of Sharpless, and walked away. Behind the office-desk stood his inert friend of the afternoon, who was listlessly looking at the busy crowd, while two young men were pouring into his seemingly-inattentive ears some marvelous story of stocks. He never changed his position as Drury advanced. A slight glance, cast somewhat contemptuously upon the rebellious guest of a few hours before, was the only sign of recognition which Drury caught.

The figure turned an abstracted gaze upon the questioner.

He stepped round to where he had left the Misses Darcy, but they were gone.

The trunk did arrive on the 9.30 express, and was placed in Mr. Drury's room with marvelous dispatch.

Esmond searched through its contents until he came upon an old letter, with its creases soiled and partly torn and the envelope cracked and broken at every corner. He took out the letter, lit a cigar, and sat by the open window under the gas-light, and reread it:

"NEW YORK, December 25, 187-. "MY DEAR Boy: I observe that your travels are greatly improving you. Habits of correctly observing human nature are plainly developing in your temperament, and I am "Has my trunk arrived?" asked Es- excessively glad that it is so. Books are as mond. nothing to the science of man. You cannot make yourself a just man nor a learned one until you have tried and studied your fellowYou know how anxious I am that you should be trained in the right path. I want you to have experience. I am willing that you should pay for it in the only way that experience can be bought-by personal inconveniences, if necessary-and I am doubly willing to pay the money prices that usually accompany the personal inconveniences. To

"Has my trunk arrived?" "Name?"

"Drury."

The figure seemed suddenly endowed with remarkable animation. It looked up quickly at the tall form of the young man, and then glanced sharply at the two others who had been entertaining him.

men.

"Your trunk," he said, quite briskly. day is Christmas, and the exhortations to "Let me see-wherefrom?"

"From Sandy Hook. I sent it there inadvertently this afternoon."

"Yes, yes! I remember. See in a moment." He touched a hand-bell near him. "Rather lively in the stock-market to-day, Mr. Drury," he said, during the interval before the hall-boy's arrival.

Esmond silently bowed.

"Ask the porter if Mr. Drury's trunk has arrived from Sandy Hook."

The hall-boy was off.

justice, integrity, upright dealings, and charity, which I might urge upon you here, will, I believe, be strongly suggested by the associations of the day. I hope and pray, my boy, that you will be known as the honest, upright gentleman, the true Christian, and the kindly brother in a brotherhood of man.

"As to your choice of business, I do not propose to bind you at all, as you well know. I would like you to follow my own avocation, and confess that I hope to perpetuate the house of Drury in my son and yours. If

"North Atlantic went up pretty rapidly you find your inclinations running in a to-day, Mr. Drury."

Esmond arched his eyebrows, and said

Sharpless opened his eyes.

"Why, don't you know? It's an everyday matter with your old man, I presume?" "Positively I haven't cared for business much since I came here, and-"

"Well, they run up two and a half this afternoon, and kept a-running long after closing-hours. Old Capsheaf-the president, you know they say he mortgaged every cent he's got and put it into the road, and sent word that he'd bust before N. A. should, and up it went. And that's the way your dad cleans Darcy out. What I call getting on his head with both feet, don't you?"

"'Twas rather a lucky stroke of business," said Esmond.

"Lucky! Yes, devilish lucky, that was! I'd like to ha' been in the corner that worked that piece of luck; that's all think so?"

don't you

"I'm told," said the inert clerk, leaning far over the desk, and gently feeling the texture of Esmond's coat-" I'm told that Darcy has lost heavily on N. A."

The porter arrived as the remark ended. "Mr. Drury's trunk come?" inquired the clerk, with a show of despair at being interrupted.

ders.

"They, too, have heard how Drury has

business vain, try your hand. If you lose, that is the experience which is not too dearly purchased. If you gain, I shall be glad mainly over an evidence of your business capacity. I feel sure, however, that your mind runs rather to the aesthetical than the practical. You are more of a poet and a dreamer than a 'speculator' or an 'operator,' and I am content. But I must confess that I should very dearly like to hear in your travels that you had transacted some purely business affair-something that might stamp you at once as a practical worker in the world's harvest-some master-stroke of business!

"I write these lines as a guidance to you in your coming contact with the world. Whether you follow them or reject them, you will always be the one cherished object of affection in this world to

"Your devoted father,
"HENRY J. Drury."

VIII.

ESMOND had read this letter over often enough to know it by heart, but recent de