Page:New Peterson magazine 1859 Vol. XXXV.pdf/212

 JENNY AND MR. CLEAVES.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “SUSY L-’S DIARY."

Rozbury, Dec. 2, 1857.

Cousin George came out this morning from Boston with his easy-going carriage, to take me in to see some of the beautiful streets and picture rooms and galleries. While we were yet fresh, having only driven awhile on the Common and along a principal street, I chanced to look up and saw the letters, “Saturday Morning Chronicle office.”

“Stop!” said I, dropping my hand on George's arm. “Here's Mr. Cleaves’ office; I want to see him just a minute. Do you know him?”

“Not from Adam. Who is he?”

“Editor and publisher of the ‘Saturday Morning Chronicle;’ a good man as ever lived, I am sure. I want to see him. You just stop and let me run up and find him. I can find his office, after the experience I had in New York, last fall”

So out I sprang: up the dusty, paper-littered stairs I went, guided by letterings along the way, up to the second landing: and there I again found Mr. Cleaves’ sign—this time on a ground-glass panel—'Saturday Morning Chronicle office.” I tapped, and immediately the door was opened by a bright-eyed little fellow with budgets of papers under his arms and on his arms. Upon my inquiries for Mr. Cleaves, he opened the door wide by setting his shoulder against it, and said in a pleasant voice, “Mr. Cleaves, a lady.”

Mr. Cleaves looked up from his writing, rose slowly, advanced slowly, tooking inquiringly into my face. We met in the middle of the room.

“Is it Mr. Cleaves?” I asked. For one of our neighbors, who used to see the “Chronicle” ten or fifteen years ago, had told me that Mr. Cleaves was then the publisher, and I expected, on this account, as well as on account of the ripe, elegant and manly conservatism which give smoothings and dignity to all his complaints of abuses, all his pleas for reform, to see a man away along in the years, a man with a pale face and many white hairs, whereas the man before me could not be more than twenty-eight or thirty. But he was old enough to be snugly married, I instantaneously reflected, and if a man is snugly married before I present myself to him, this is all I ask of him. “Mr. Cleaves,” he had answered, bowing slightly, waiting.

Now, when I was running upstairs, in fact, when I began to open my lips to speak again, I expected to say, “'Tis Miss Cabot, author of so and so, published in the ‘Chronicle,' as you remember.” Qn the contrary, a merry whim seizing me, I said, “And guess who I am. I'm a writer. I've written for you—within the last year—within the last month—guess." I was laughing at his puzzled looks. I saw that he could not bring himself to guessing clearly who I was, because there I was before him with my queer proceeding and my laughter. It was quite enough for him to get along with these. So I said, with demureness suddenly gathered, “ 'Tis Miss Cabot, of P—.”

"Ah? Miss Cabot? how do you do?” shaking my hand heartily, laughing. “Come and sit down;” and, on one side of the green-covered table he sat down in the arm-chair from which he had risen, on the other side I sat down in another arm-chair like it. We fell at once into easy conversation; the new book by Curtis lying on the table between us, helping to start us.

By-and-by his face brightening, he said, “I wonder I didn’t guess it was you; for you are exactly like your writings. I might have expected you to look just so, and appear just so, But I thought of Mrs. Fales, friend of yours, as she wrote me one time. She has written for my paper; I thought of her.”

“Oh, no,” replied I, gravely, “Mrs, Fales is handsome, She’s a very handsome women; we're not in the least alike in our persone or appearance.” I said it with the painful consciousness of ugliness, the painful longing for beauty I have felt now and then in wy life, but not often; I am generally content—content, that is, with the face God has given me, but filled with craving for a beautiful spirit within that shall beautify and sanctify, all my inward and outward life, making me even lovely to look upon,

“I must go,” said I, rising. “My cousin is at the door waiting.”

“I am sorry to have you go,” replied he, accompanying me with slow steps toward the door of the room, pausing at the door with his hand on the knob, “I am pleased te havo met

�