lashed upon me, and I
suddenly paused. He probably observed my rapid footsteps and their
pause, for he turned toward me, when in a confused manner I stammered
forth an apology, which, undesignedly on my part, involved a statement
of the contradictory motives which had influenced me. With the most
quiet and prepossessing demeanor he questioned me if I were a stranger
visiting the city, and in reply I gave him all the necessary particulars
concerning myself,--that my name was Waters, that I was employed by the
firm of Brown, Urthers & Co., managing their branch business. A
conversation ensued, which elicited the fact that the gentleman had
been acquainted with my father a score of years before. The latter,
whose head lies on his last pillow, was then a clerk in the New York
house of Sampson, Bell & Co. The gentleman before me was Mr. Bell, who
during the existence of the house had been first a clerk, and
subsequently the partner who conducted their branch business at the city
of my own present residence.

With this preliminary acquaintance, he kindly took my arm, and, leading
me back to the monument, informed me, in a manner entirely free from any
poignancy, or from that lionizing of costly memorials to departed
friends so often indulged in, that it was erected to the memory of his
wife; that she had formerly been an actress of celebrity, attaining
peculiar distinction by her representation of the character of Imogen,
in Shakespeare's Cymbeline; and that the marble figure portrayed her at
the utterance of the words--

'Oh for a horse with wings! Hear'st thou, Pisanio?
He is at Milford Haven. Read and tell me
How far 'tis thither ... Say, and speak quick,
How far it is
To this same blessed Milford;'[5]

and that the architecture of the tomb was intended to correspond with
the period at which the incidents of the drama transpired.

* * * * *

Mr. Bell's ordinary life was one neither of seclusion nor of widely
extended social courtesies; but of active benevolence and cheerful
retirement, disfigured neither by ostentatious philanthropy nor studied
recluseness. A son and daughter who had hardly passed the confines of
juvenility, with the necessary attendants, formed his household. For the
rest, he lived apparently as a gentleman of taste and wealth might be
supposed to do.

In this household I gradually acquired an intimacy. This was partially
owing to the circumstance that I h