it, in which all the crowd of
beautiful girls were lying on banks and under trees, and perched like
splendid birds up in the air. Then the curtain came down with a thud,
smothering up the fire, and hiding everything. The storm of music broke
off with a crash, and the crowd began to shout and yell, and stamp their
feet till the whole building shook.

Sisters, this is all I can tell you about the "Black Crook." It is
splendid, and wonderfully enticing; but you might as well expect me to
give you a clear idea of a burning city. It is just one picture of
gorgeous confusion and confused gorgeousness.

XXVI.

LIVING APART.

Dear sisters:--There has been great tumult and trouble in New York since
I wrote my last report. Something that relates to the honor of Vermont
has thrilled the public mind to a fearful extent. A smart, genial,
warm-hearted, dashing person, by the name of Fisk--Mr. James Fisk--born
and brought up in our State, has been shot in the largest tavern in the
city, where he died, I greatly fear, without a realizing sense that he
was so soon to be called before his Maker.

Many of you, my sisters, can remember this man--a great, handsome,
good-natured-looking fellow, with sunshiny eyes, and a mustache that
curled up like a pair of horns on each side of a mouth that always
seemed ready to laugh at something. There wasn't a man that ever came to
Sprucehill that everybody was so sure to remember. His great wagon,
painted off like a circus, with four horses a-drawing it through the
village, with a splash-dash noise of whips and wheels and hoofs, was
enough to make the money spring right out of one's pocket. Mercy on me!
Didn't he make the dry-goods fly! Everybody bought something of him, and
I must say that everybody liked him. In the peddling line he was a sort
of P. T. Barnum, only he didn't know how to stick to his trade as Barnum
has. He drove his four horses; he made money like everything; he outgrew
Brattleborough, which was his native place, and soon got above peddling,
his native business.

The next step towards his exaltation and ruin was that he left Vermont,
a man who will do that of his own accord is sure to run wild. Well, he
left his native State, and set up at the Hub of the Universe, which
every one knows is Boston, where he began his education as a financier
and a millionaire.

Boston is a great city. I should like to hear any one dare to deny that;
but, then, people here say that, in