slowly for his enthusiastic nature. He saw its importance, and resolved that it should be finished speedily. As President of the Company he repaired in person to the spot, and enduring toil, and exposure, and sickness, returned

home but to die; but he has left his mark upon the age in which he lived. The railroad is nearly completed, and the first iron track between the Atlantic and Pacific is henceforth indelibly connected with the name of John L. Stephens.

A

PORTRAIT of my grandmother hangs upon my parlor wall. It was taken at least sixty-five years since, and represents the venerable lady, whom I remember in my childhood, in spectacles and comely cap, as a young and blooming girl. She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by the side of a prim aunt of hers, and with her back to the open window. Her costume is quaint, but handsome. It consists of a cream-colored dress made high in the throat, ruffled around the neck, and over the bosom and the shoulders. The waist is just under her shoulders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter than any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the wrist. Around the plump and rosy neck, which I remember as shrivelled and sallow, and hidden under a decent lace handkerchief, hangs, in the picture, a necklace of large ebony beads. There are two curls upon the forehead, and the rest of the hair flows away in ringlets down her neck.

The

hands hold an open book: the eyes look up from it with tranquil sweetness, and through the open window behind you see a quiet landscape, a hill, a tree, the glimpse of a river, and a few peaceful summer clouds. Often in my younger days, when my grandmother sat by the fire after dinner lost in thought,-perhaps remembering the time when the picture was a portrait-I have curiously compared her wasted face with the blooming beauty of the girl, and tried to detect the likeness. It was strange how the resemblance would sometimes appear: how, as I gazed and gazed upon her old face, ago disappeared before my eager glance, as snow melts in the sunshine, revealing the flowers of a forgotten spring.

It was saddest of all to see my grandmother herself contemplating the portrait. The story is told of old Wycherly, the wit and dramatist, that when his brief day

of popular homage was over, he called, in his decay, for the full-wigged portrait taken when he was the fashion, and wrote under it "quantum mutatus ab illo !" Alas! how changed from that! The feeling in the superannuated man about town seems hardly genuine, and like every thing those men did, has a slight theatrical air. But it was touching to see my grandmother steal quietly up to her portrait, on still summer mornings when every one had left the house, and I, the only child, played, disregarded, and look at it wistfully and long. She held her hand over her eyes to shade them from the light that streamed in at the window, and I have seen her stand at least a quarter of an hour gazing steadfastly at the picture. She said nothing, she made no motion, she shed no tear, but when she turned away there was always a pensive sweetness in her face that made it not less lovely than the face of her youth. I have learned since what her thoughts must have been,-how that long, wistful glance annihilated time and space, how forms and faces unknown to any other, rose in sudden resurrection around her, how she loved, suffered, struggled and conquered again; how many a jest that I shall never hear, how many a game that I shall never play, how many a song that I shall never sing, were all renewed and remembered as my grandmother contemplated her picture.

ever saw, was a great mystery to me. was none the less so when Smith took me to his father's house to see the "family portraits.' Among these there were some a the same strange young women, and I racked my fancy again, to discover why they were so different from our young women. Smith suddenly explained the whole mystery.

"What an odd, old-fashioned style of dress," said Smith.

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It was a very obvious remark, and so was the fact of gravitation very obvious before the apple hit Newton on the nose. I looked at my grandmother's picture with new eyes, and saw why a human being, of the female species, sixty years ago was so entirely different from the same creature now. Fashion was the Magician. Fashion was the great commander who said (6 wear ruffles," and they were worn; elevate the waist," and it was clevated; "powder the hair," and it was powdered. For a few days after Smith's remark, it really seemed as if fashion were the secret of history. Had Marshal Turenne marched to victory in the uniform of the "Light-Guard," or that of "Duryee's Regiment," I trembled to think how much prestige he would necessarily lose. The horse-hair wig and the polished armor began to seem too large a part of Marshal Turenne; and as I pondered on the portraits of the beautiful ladies of the Court, they seemed to me only paint, patch, and scratch. Then those Elizabethan towers upon the head! How gladly my fancy fled from them and rested contentedly in the close, comely, Grisette-ish little cap of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Who makes the fashion then, since so much depends upon it? That is a question which I cannot get answered. My philosophical friends have their theories about it. Flamingo, in his lofty way, says that every fashion has a profound significance, and that if you could really see the reasons of things as you walk down Broadway, you would enjoy in a sedate and instructive manner the glittering varieties of costume,-in fact, he says, you would distil a drop of the honey of wisdom from every flower of folly that blooms in that gay parterre.

"Exactly," I say to Flamingo, "but you miss the point. Here comes my cousin Maude in her new suit of furs. She follows the fashion which, this winter, prescribes small muffs. You see she can scarcely squeeze those darling hands into that bit of a muff, which is no larger than a good-sized cuff. Now what, pray, is the 'profound significance' of that absurdity of my cousin Maude's ?"

Well," says Flamingo, "I suppose the significance of carrying a muff in winter, is to keep the hands warm. The size is a matter of convenience."

"Not at all; it is a matter of whim, or of fashion, which only concerns the form, and has nothing to do with the essence. Last winter Maude carried a muff as large as a bearskin, and next winter she will wear thread-gloves, if it is the fashion."

And it is the truth. Flamingo can never get any nearer to his profound reason in fashion than this, that people imiitate the dress of one whom they acknowledge as a leader, just as boys imitate the handwriting, and collegians the rhetorical style of certain persons whom they admire. Fashion is a kind of hero-worship, he says. "Poetical young men turn down their collars and drink gin and water because Childe Harold did it." Fashion is imitation founded in genuine reverence. Your tailor pads and puffs and squeezes, says philosophical Flamingo. Why does he do it? To make your figure somewhat resemble what is called the ideal figure of the Apollo, or some other type of fine manly form. The individual tailor knows nothing of this principle, but nevertheless, that is the reason of the pigeonbreasted waistcoats and the stuffed coats which he makes. Fine tailoring co-operates with fine arts, says Flamingo. It tries to make a man as handsome as a statue.

But this, I confess, seems to me seeing. much more in a picture than the painter meant. I will not deny that it is often truly so, and that there is beauty in a work, according as it is seen, and even more and a different beauty than was intended. Yet I still recur to the inquiry, Who makes the fashion? because I cannot believe that there is any very profound reason for my trowsers being cut straight this winter, when they lapped a little over the foot a year ago. Nor do I fancy there is any especial mystery in the fact that the skirts of my street-coat must now hang to the calves of my legs, when last year they scarcely fell below my waist. What would induce my cousin Maude to receive visitors this morning in the costume of my grandmother's portrait? Yet it is much more simple and picturesque than any thing Maude will wear. only reason she can give is, that it is "out of fashion." Who put it out? And who, from time to time, continues to put "out of fashion" what is graceful and picturesque, and to put "in fashion " very graceless and clumsy contrivances? The other day my aunt Jane entertained the little folk who came to take tea with Clara by coming down in her bridal hat.

The

There was one burst of laughter from young and old. "You may laugh," said aunt Jane, smiling, "but when I went to church, after my marriage, in that hat, I assure you it was the envy and despair of the whole town; and, by next Sunday, the church was full of all kinds of imitations of it." When the little people came to take leave of aunt Jane, she said to them, "keep the bonnets you are wearing to-night for twenty years, and then you will laugh as heartily at them as you do at my bridal hat to night." Should we not? Here is Claude Fay in the very plenitude of this winter's fashion. Let him walk down Broadway twenty, or ten years hence in this suit, which to-day all we young men envy and admire so much, if he dare!

Not many years ago our mothers all wore leg-of-mutton sleeves,-stiff, starched, clumsy wings, opposed to every feeling of propriety and sense of beauty. Then came the sleeves puffed about the shoulder and upper part of the arm. Aunt Jane, I remember, used to wear under-sleeves, or circular cushions, stuffed with down, or feathers, or something else, to make the puff of the outer sleeve sufficiently prominent; they used to sit in these deformed dresses, and laugh by the hour over Queen Anne's hoops and heels, and the Chinese coiffure of Louis XIV's ladies. And to-day at dinner, as cousin Maude held her plate for a cut of roast turkey, and dipped her falling-lace under-sleeve into a dish of gravy, and then draggled it over the table-cloth, she was shouting with laughter at the idea of my mother in those other sleeves. Maude hates the Bloomers, because they are contemporary, but merely derides the high heels and short skirts of earlier days. This she did vehemently one day last week, as I escorted her up the Fifth Avenue, and, at the same moment, her skirts were sweeping the mud and offal of the street, to the great saving of the scavenger's salary, but, unhappily, to the great disgust of every decent person. (6 My dear coz.," Maudo says to me, one must be in the fashion." "But who makes it ?" inquire I desperately. "Don't be a fool, John," she replies, and from this pious devotee, I can get no other account of the goddess.

After such little passages with her, I stroll slowly homeward to my bachelor cigar, and wonder why Maude will be so subservient to Fashion. But often enough I turn upon myself, and demand if I am not equally so, if we are not all more orthodox in that faith than in any other. I say to myself, Would you now wear Farmer Bullock's bell-crowned beaver down Broadway? Would you go to Mrs. Bounce's

ball to-night, in the coat your father was married in? You remember it, with the long swallow tail, and the lappets upon the waist; or would you even wear the waistcoat you wore to her first ball, seven years ago? Being a young man, I naturally say, no. Or if Claude Fay, who is a lover of my cousin Maude's, wished to secure her favor, would he be likely to array himself in a green, half-trimmed frock and breeches, lined with silk," or a Queen's blue dress suit," or a half-dress suit of ratteen, lined with satin," or even a pair of silk stocking-breeches, and another pair of a bloom-color?" Yet Oliver Goldsmith donned all this gear to win the smiles of the Jessamy Bride. And, cousin Maude! the Jessamy Bride found it "impossible not to love and respect his goodness of heart." She thought less of the ratteen coat, than the true human heart it covered, and when he, who, in his credulous and childlike way, had loved and honored her, lay dead in his solitary room, the Jessamy Bride carried from his coffin a lock of the poet's hair.

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Now, why would not Claude Fay wear what Oliver Goldsmith wore? Simply and only, because it is not the fashion. And why shouldn't it be the fashion to wear bloom-colored breeches now? Is it, after all, more than a whim? Has fashion any deeper foundation than the love of change? I find myself in October giving away all the cravats I bought in June. They are quite as handsome as then, and would be equally available for the next season. But I have done with them, I am tired of them. My younger brother, Hal, may wear them, but I would rather go through next summer in a black silk ribbon, than use the ties I liked so much this season. I doubt if you can make more of it than love of change. Uncle Solomon and his set were great judges of wine. At least, they said so, and I know that they were great drinkers. I dined often at uncle's table and saw much of the set. They swore by Madeira. Sherry was a thin, woman's wine; and they quaffed foaming glasses of the sparkling ruby liquor. This was ten years ago. How they laughed at Clarence's death in a butt of Malmsey. "Why," said Uncle Solomon, "a man who loved such a wine deserved no better fate." "There couldn't be but one worse fate than being drowned in Malmsey," said jolly old bottle-nosed Crabtoe, Uncle Sol.'s partner. "And what is that ?" asked I timorously, "Why, drowning Malmsey in yourself," cried Crabtoe. Falstaff and his friends fared no better. "Sack and sugar,' said another of this dogmatic crew, "oh! Lord!" So they drained their Madeira and cracked their nuts. Wine-drinking, Í

inferred, was a matter of taste and not of fashion: or, perhaps, of country. But I devoutly clung to Madeira and the Crabtoe doctrines, and when I heard from a young friend, that his father, who had lived several years in England, always drank Sherry to his dinner, I grieved for his father, as for a man who had become uncivilized. The next time I dined with Uncle Solomon, I spoke of French wines, and German and Italian wines. They were damned directly. They were "stuff," and "execrable," and "women's wine," and many other disagreeable things. Madeira was the wine for a man. 66 Amen," thundered Crabtoe, but broke off suddenly, smarting with a twinge of the gout.

"Claret is your gouty wine," cried Uncle Sol. "Your Rhenish is vinegar," said another guest. "And your Italian wines, muddy sweetened water," added a very rich gentleman at the foot of the table, who had never travelled farther than Saratoga.

Uncle Sol. and his set were fairly entitled to their opinion, and might drink what wine they preferred. But why this monstrous contempt and commiseration for other tastes than theirs? Are not sweet Tokay and the Rhenish wines, the wines of history and poetry? Did any old drinking Baron, whose exploits in emptying beakers have made wine-drinking an historic fact, ever condescend to the fire that burned in Uncle Sol.'s ruby Madeira? Would Horace have exchanged a single sip of his exquisite Falernian for a tun of such lava? Was the wine of Cyprus, which old Crabtoe pishes at as cordial, ever drunk by modern traveller without emotion? To hear Uncle Sol. and his set, you would have fancied that no one ever drank wine with understanding, until this blessed club of diners-out met for the purpose. It imposed upon me for a long time, and I had a secret pity for men who did not believe in Madeira. But I presently crossed the sea myself, and discovered what good wine was. I drank the pure vintage of the Rhine, and the Danube, and the Arno, the Sicilian shore, and the broad fields of France; and tasted the grape and its blossom, the sun, the country, and the climate, in each wine I quaffed. I remembered those tables at home flaming with hot wines, and a brief glimpse of cool claret at the end of dinner, introduced as a curiosity. I saw the lithe, mercurial Frenchmen, of all men the most nimble, and who live on claret, and remembered Uncle Sol.'s decree, "Claret is your gouty wine." Uncle Sol., I laughed harder at you than ever you did at Clarence. Well, when I came home after six years' absence, I dined one day with the remnant of the old set. Old Crabtoe's

nose had, in the meanwhile, blossomed so brilliantly, that the set called it the burning bush. Why don't you take in your sign, Crabtoe?" said Uncle Sol., "good wine needs no bush !" and they all roared again. Yet six years had swept away much prejudice and much wine. I found them drinking Claret, Rhenish, and Sherry, to a man. There was a bottle of very old Madeira introduced as a curiosity, and every man took a thimble-full. But "the staple tipple," as Claude Fay calls it, was light wine. "Light wine's all the go now, my boy," said Uncle Sol. "Why ?" said I. "Oh! I don't know: it's the fashion. We don't swig and guzzle as we used to do," replied he.

"Out of the fashion, if you dare," said Claude Fay, who heard me.

Το

And was he not right again? Is it not easier to stretch the truth a little, than to wear a high black-satin stock? Yet that was the top of fashion when the first gentlemen in Europe wore it. Show me a man bold enough to be out of fashion, not for a freak, or a bet, or for an occasion, but, if you choose to say so, upon principle, and I will show you a hero. We none of us like it. We like to have our hats and boots and waistcoats in the fashion. We are averse to having our wives and daughters-how much more our mistresses-say-" oh! how old-fashioned." Nothing more completely describes a man or woman than that term. say an old-fashioned gentleman," is to evoke a grave and courtly figure in the mind, with an amplitude of ruffle and a generous coat, bowing, as if bowing were one of the cardinal virtues, and addressing a woman as if he were Solomon's ambassador to the Queen of Sheba. There is a certain quaint grace about it, which is characteristic and winning. The "oldfashioned " manner, like the costume of my grandmother in her portrait, instantly restores the old times and the old society. But you and I study it and enjoy it, as we do Egyptian specimens. We have no wish to be Pharaoh nor Ptolemy.

Is it not, after all, mere whim? When Uncle Joseph died, Aunt Jane went into prodigious mourning. She was hung in black, like a city at a public funeral. She darkened the sunshine as she walked. Every rustle of her widow's sable shook out gloom. Smiles died upon the face of

children, and in their play they regarded her coming with terror, as haymakers a rising thunder-cloud. Aunt Jane's widowhood, merely from those clouds of darkness round about her, is an inky blot upon my memory. Why did she swathe herself so solemnly? "To manifest the gloom of her feelings, and the night of sorrow which had swallowed up the day of her happiness," responds Flamingo, the philosopher. But have the Chinese no feeling, then? Are "Celestial" widows so gay at their Lords' decease that they must show it to all the world, by donning white? If you come to philosophy, white is the absence of color as much as black; and, religiously, it seems to me that it is as well for the widow to show her faith and resignation by indicating symbolically that her spouse has gone to heaven, as that she is broken-hearted. At least, our neighbors of the Antipodes have as much reason for their white as we for our black. The truth is, Aunt Jane entombed herself in sables, because it is the fashion. Had it been the habit to mourn in green, do you not know that my Aunt Jane would have been a perfect pea?

'Tis fashion that makes cowards of us all. A belle's face in the bonnet of a score of years since, was like a rose at the bottom of a coal-scuttle. Now it stands forth from her bonnet, like that rose bursting from the bud. I consider that we are the gainers. But I am not very turbulent in my joy, for I wonder whether the next freak will not be to cover the face with the oriental Yashmak, leaving one eye only to beam soft splendor through that terrible eclipse. It is fashion that rules us, not taste, not beauty, not the becoming, nor the picturesque. I like the Rubens hat, I think it graceful and handsome. It harmonizes with my face, my moustache and beard. I would wear the Rubens hat if I dared. But if I should go down Nassau-street to-morrow morning in that hat, my mercantile credit would suffer. Claude Fay is a lawyer; that is, he hires a room in William-street, and puts "Claude Fay, Attorney at Law," upon the door. Claude hates the law and adores dancing. But he doesn't dare to grow a moustache. His uncle told him that a moustache was without precedent in the profession, and would ruin his prospects. But I make Claude's mouth water by telling him of the silken splendors that drape the lips of French and Italian advocates.

"Poor Claude," you say, and so do I. But we are all in the same ship. I cannot make much of it. Why does old Uncle Sol. insist upon drinking Rhenish out of green glasses? The wine tastos no bet

ter. It has no beauty, then, but a dirty green color. The golden amber of Marcobrunner and the pale hue of Liebfraumilch. are all forced to show 'the same. But Uncle Sol. would fight rather than not drink his "Hock," as he calls it, out of a green glass. Crabtoe has the same freak about his delicate Sherry. Wine that a few years since was too weak to dilute water, as he expressed it, he now exposes for years in his attic with nothing but a bit of gauze over the mouth of the demijohn, so that what little original fire there was, exhales, and when it is decanted and brought to table, Crabtoe will not drink it, nor will he let any body else drink it, except out of the thinnest smooth glass, with a wisp of a stem. "It enhances the delicacy of the wine, sir," says Crabtoe. "Delicate wine!" says Gawl, his Boston friend, "I call it ether. What do you

drink such stuff for ?"

"Stuff!" cries

Crabtoc, "it costs me a hundred dollars the dozen." I drink it out of a tumbler, and it is just as delicate. Let old Crab toe try a little water out of thin and thick glasses, and see if he discovers any difference. They all iced their Claret, when it first came, and no wine could be cold enough. Now they say that ice numbs the wine and destroys the flavor, and that Claret should be of the same temperature as that of the room in which it is drunk. Catch John Bull drinking half-and-half out of any thing but pewter! If you ask him why not, he mumbles some indistinct science about "galvanic action," between the liquid and the metal, a statement which he knows, and we all know, is of the same scientific dignity, as the medical practice of the old woman who transfers rheumatism to apple-trees. Metal was a moro economical ware for the ale-house than glass, and thus economy set the fashion.

And I confess, too, that it is pleasanter to drink ale out of a tankard, and fine wine from delicate glass. Yet you, on your part, must confess that it is only a whim of fancy. -a mere matter of taste. And this would be enough to explain the fashion, if, unfortunately, the experience of fashion did not show that to-morrow the whole thing may be reversed, and we may be all drinking Claret out of black mugs, and ale from glass. In Germany, Bavarian beer is drunk from glass tankards, and Lager-bier is kept in earthen bottles. It is melancholy to see how we are bandied about, how impossible it is to get a foothold upon the fact of this mystery.

And yet, could it be calculated, it would cease to charm, perhaps to sway. The tailor in Paris, whose audacious hand dares cut my trowsers shorter or longer, broader or narrower, has already effected