Bohemian Days Three American Tales   By: George Alfred Townsend (1841-1914)

Three American Tales

BY GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND "GATH"

"And David arose and fled to Gath. And he changed his behavior. And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him. And the time that David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months."

H. CAMPBELL & CO., Publishers, NO. 21 PARK ROW, NEW YORK

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

THE BURR PRINTING HOUSE AND STEAM TYPE SETTING OFFICE, Cor. Frankfort and Jacob Sts., NEW YORK.

TO TEN FRIENDS AT DINNER,

GILSEY HOUSE, NEW YORK,

APRIL 21, 1879;

WHO MADE THIS PUBLICATION

A PROMISE AND AN OBLIGATION .

PREFACE.

So far from the first tale in this book being of political motive, it was written among the subjects of it, and read to several of them in 1864. Perhaps the only souvenir of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall an old suburb, now nearly erased and illegible by the extension of a great city, and may be considered a home American picture about contemporary with the European tales.

CONTENTS.

SHORT NOVELS.

THE REBEL COLONY IN PARIS 13

MARRIED ABROAD 99

THE DEAF MAN OF KENSINGTON 155

CHORDS.

BOHEMIA 9

LITTLE GRISETTE 93

THE PIGEON GIRL 149

THE DEAD BOHEMIAN 279

BOHEMIA.

The farther I do grow from La Bohème , The more I do regret that foolish shame Which made me hold it something to conceal, And so I did myself expatriate; For in my pulses and my feet I feel That wayward realm was still my own estate; Wise wagged our tongues when the dear nights grew late, And quainter, clearer, rose our quick conceits, And pure and mutual were our social sweets. Oh! ever thus convivial round the gate Of Letters have the masters and the young Loitered away their enterprises great, Since Spenser revelled in the halls of state, And at his tavern rarest Jonson sung.

THE REBEL COLONY IN PARIS.

I.

THE EXILES.

In the latter part of October, 1863, seven very anxious and dilapidated personages were assembled under the roof of an old, eight storied tenement, near the church of St. Sulpice, in the city of Paris.

The seven under consideration had reached the catastrophe of their decline and rise. They had met in solemn deliberation to pass resolutions to that effect, and take the only congenial means for replenishment and reform. This means lay in miniature before a caged window, revealed by a superfluity of light a roulette table, whereon the ball was spinning industriously from the practised fingers of Mr. Auburn Risque, of Mississippi.

Mr. Auburn Risque had a spotted eye and a bluishly cold face; his fingers were the only movable part of him, for he performed respiration and articulation with the same organ his nose; and the sole words vouchsafed by this at present were: "Black black black white black white white black" etc.