ced. When it was all over, and our visitors
were gone, a costly handkerchief, with a lace border, was not to be
found. It had been last seen in the hands of General Bratish. Having no
idea that, if he had pocketed it by mistake, it would not be returned,
we waited patiently,--very patiently,--supposing he might have thrown
aside his company dress-coat without examining the pockets, and that
when he put it on again the handkerchief would be forthcoming, of
course. But no,--nothing was heard of it, until one evening at a lecture
my wife suddenly caught my arm, and, pointing to a white handkerchief
the General was flourishing within reach, said, "There's Aunt Mary's
handkerchief, now!"--"Nonsense, my dear!"--"It is, I tell you; I can see
where he has ripped off the lace." I thought her beside herself; but
still--why the sudden substitution of a large red Spitalfields for the
white handkerchief? "Perhaps," said I to my wife,--"perhaps the
handkerchief was not marked, and he did not know where to find the
owner."--"But it was marked, and he knows the owner as well as you do,"
was the reply. Of course, I had nothing more to say; and so I laughed
the exhibition off, as a sort of _pas de mouchoir_, like that which
brought Forrest into a controversy with Macready.

And then something else happened. I missed the only copy I had in the
world of "Niagara and Goldau," which he had borrowed of me and returned,
with emphasis; and many months after he had disappeared, I received a
volume of poems from the heart of Germany, entitled, "Der Heimathgruss,
Eine Pfingstgabe von Mathilde von Tabouillot, geborene Giester,"
published at Wesel, 1840, with a letter from the lady herself, thanking
me with great warmth and earnestness for my pamphlet in defence of
General Bratish. Putting that and that together, I began to have a
suspicion that my copy of "Niagara and Goldau" had been presented to the
authoress by my friend, the General,--perhaps in the name of the author.

Yet more. While these little incidents were accumulating and seething
and simmering, I received a letter from Louis Bratish, in beautiful
French, dated Birmingham, 7th October, 1841, in which he thanked me most
heartily for what I had done as the friend of his brother, "John
Bratish,"--withholding the "General,"--and begging me to consider it as
coming from the family; and about the same time, another letter, and the
last I ever received, from the General himself. It was dated "