NICARAGUA N. WALKER.

HIS ADVENTURES AND OPINIONS.

LOVED AND LOST.

HIS is the adventure to which I feelingly alluded in my previous correspondence. I confess that I did not intend it to be a laughable story; but my editor tells me it has come out humorous. That is a matter of taste. I leave the narrative to be judged by my readers. It is true; that is the only consolation I have in its publication, for the memory of Miss Defritz even now is a cherished dream; but the moral of my sad experiences of her distinguished family is so supreme that I should wrong society were I to hesitate about launching it into the world as a standing ethical illustration. I have no doubt the School Boards will introduce this touching romance of real life into their books of "moral lessons." Should they do so, I am prepared to act liberally by them. N.B.-My address can be had at the printer's, and I understand the law of copyright and royalty, which is more than any English lawyer does, to say nothing of the Judicial Bench. But this is the story :—

CHAPTER I.

“WE MET, 'TWAS AT A BALL."

I met her at Bath.

We danced together. It was a fashionable ball. Our names were in the papers. She was the belle. Her hair was golden; her shoulders alabaster.

"In Devonshire! Do you reside in that beautiful county?" she asked.

"I do, loveliest of woman."

"Don't be absurd," she replied; but her loving look enveloped me. "Be mine, dear maid; this faithful heart can never prove untrue." I hardly know what I said or how.

She blushed, she sighed, she laughed, she shook her fan; she introduced me to her brother.

And dark!

CHAPTER II.

HER BROTHER, WHO WAS VERY TALL,

Whiskers bluish-black.

A contrast to his Sister.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance," he said.

"Thank you, sir, I am quite well," was my reply, or words to that effect.

"Do you know Malvern?"

"I know him not," I said, "but I shall gladly be to do so."

My words seemed to come out as if I had no control over them, I was so fearfully and wonderfully happy. The same feeling overcomes me as I write, memory asserting her magic sway.

"We are going to Malvern next week," said her brother.

"I gill wo to-I mean I will go too," I said.

"All right."

Noble youth, I said in my heart; and then we parted.

Now I know what the poets mean by the joy of "first and only love." I would I were a poet that I might sing to thee! I am rich. I will engage Tennyson to teach me poetry that I may syllabub her name !

CHAPTER III.

AND SO ARE MALVERN HILLS.

At Malvern. Rare ecstatic hills; how my soul thrills at your beauty. I have seen larger. The Rocky Mountains are taller; but no matter.

Met them both driving round the hills. How delightful 'tis to see brothers and sisters all agree. That is poetry at any rate, and new. I am inspired by love.

Joined her and him at the Imperial. Saw their names in the Visitors' List. Thus it was: "Colonel Fitzpatrick Defritz, and Miss Defritz."

Invited to dinner. Miss Defritz retires early. Her head aches. Dear head, it aches with loving Nicaragua N. W. Beautiful thought! Heaven has no greater loy than jove-I mean no greater joy than love. How my feelings overcome my sowers of peech! "Do you play billiards!" the Colonel asks.

"I do, yes, oh yes, I play billiards, and I love Louisa Ann."

She told me her name in a whisper, when the fish was being removed.

"Yes," said the Colonel scowling, "I know that: do you play for heavy stakes?"

"Heavy Stakes," I repeated. "Yes, whatever you please." "Not very heavy," he said appealingly, "don't say very heavy." "What you will," I said, seizing his coat sleeve and weeping. "I love her to extraction."

I am determined to be a hero. We play; we drink; we laugh; we smoke; we bet with other people; I pay money away like water, as they say, though I never yet saw water do anything of the kind.

Onward, onward; life is earnest, Ann Louisa is its goal, and her head, her head is aching for the love of Walker, N. I shall get on without Tennyson. My head is splitting. I begin to be aweary of the nun-aweary of the sun. My pen lisps and splutters. O dearest Louisa Ann !

CHAPTER IV.

THE MORNING SHONE ALL CLEAR AND GAY.

She is so sorry to see me looking unwell.

"You were not as prudent as you ought to have been last night," she says; "my father the dear General ought to be here, to lecture Fitzpatrick for keeping you up."

"Your brother is a delightful companion," I reply, "and you are mine for ever and for aye."

"Yes, Nicaragua N., Nicky dear, I am," she said, and I kissed her lily hand.

We wake a talk. Oh, agony, will the memory of that fatal time always affect my pen and speech thus? We take a walk is what I should have writ. The sun lights up the glorious hills. We sit beside a sunny slope.

"O maiden, wilt thou marry me?”

"You must ask papa, my dear.”

"If he consents?"

"Then so do I."

O sweet confusion, happy hour. She is mine. The everlasting hills, basking in the midnight sun, echo the exotic words, and all the land is heavy with the sounds of orange groves, and music from sweet lutes that gush forth in the fidst of mountains (pah! in the midst of fountains); dost thou like the picture?

The Colonel says he lost two pundred hounds to that fire-eater who came in, you know, last night.

"I don't know," I say, "I kon't dow."

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Yes, and was so offensive."

"No matter," I say, "life is real, life is turnips."

"Certainly," he says. "Will you just hand me your cheque for that IOU which you gave me last night for that five hundred, don't you know ?"

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Strange, my memory fails me," I say.

"But your banker won't," responds that glorious youth, the fair one's favourite brother.

"Never," I say, "the cheque is thine."

And soon the money too. We go together to the bank, and sit beside the girl; we hear the parson preach and say—————No, no, that is not what I mean. Louisa Ann sings that in an evening. We go together to the bank, and get the big cheque cashed. The Colonel says I shall have my revenge, and we play again at three-pool, she having retired early because of that head which aches with loving me. What rhymes with pool? Down, down, bad seating heart!

The love of brandy it is known to be a a sad and fearful thing. My brain is on fire. I quarrel with the offensive stranger. He refuses to take my IOU. The manager of the hotel cashes my cheque and then I give the stranger scorn for scorn, scorn for scor, scor for sco

CHAPTER VI.

AND THEN COME IN THE BILLS.

Despair! Death! Revenge! And ten thousand other things. I rise with the lark at noon. I ask for Miss Defritz.

is Louisa Ann?

"Left by the morning mail, sir."

Oh, where

"Begone, varlet: I am the morning male! Behold in me that sad yet happy man."

I feel as if my head is parting in two, but 'twas I who had parted with three.

"The General was to have come to-day," I said

"The Colonel and

his sister were to meet him, and stay here for six leeks wonger-weeks longer I mean; pray excuse this incoherence; my head is bad, my bed is had."

"They've gone, sir," the waiter said, and grinned from there to here," and left you to pay the bill; they'll come again soon."

He grinned, I say, from ear to ear.

"Fool! Fool!" I said.

"Not me, not me," the waiter cried.

"No, thou art wise, and I am he who crieth fool against himself

What, ho, police! police! Arrest me these adventurers, and club them in the dungeon beneath the mastle coat!"

I never felt so tragic in all my weary life.

The policeman smiled, and wagged his heavy head. He knowed as they was a fly couple-those were his words, and he'd advise me to say no more about it, as I should only look like a hawful hass before the world.

He is right. I will say no more. Wretched mortal that I am. I love her still. Her golden locks have twined around my tender heart, and, in operatic language, Still I love her, Still I love her, Still I-i-i-i-i-i-i-I L-0-0-0-0-0-0-v-e her Sti-i-i-i-i-i-i-ll

"Certingly," the policeman says, and winks his eye, his crooked wicked eye.

"But she is false," I cry, “false as dicer's oaths." I will away, and kill myself. There's no law against that. Suicide alone can end this fatal passion. Ho, cab, cab, I cry, Drive me to the nearest Water Cure Establishment, the nearest Carter Wure Establishment; away, away, to the Cearest Marter Wure Establish-sh-sh-sh-I die! I die !

[N.B.-I only put this in as an effective ending-I did not die. I went home by the next train. I hope any reader who gets into a similar position will do the same, and resist his wildest desire to play at pool, which nine times out of ten certainly (as the P.C. says) rhymes with fool.]

BETWEEN TWO STOOLS.

I might have said two fools at once, for such it was.

I

Did you ever travel by coach from Hokitika to Christchurch? did six years back, during my wanderings on the other side of the Atlantic.

I sat

There were three passengers, myself and two madmen. between them. One was a morose maniac; the other whimsical to a high degree. Snakes and sugar plums, I shall never forget how that cuss went on! It was lucky there were no ladies present. He insisted upon carrying his trousers on his arm; he wanted a fire lighted in his boots that he might warm his feet; he bet me five dollars that he could swallow his own head, and grow another in five minutes.

I should have enjoyed the society of this harmless oddity but for his companion, who confidentially informed me every other minute that he should cut my throat for a vile impostor; he showed me the razor that was to do the deed. I asked him to allow me first to pay VOL. IX., N.S. 1872.

GG